Interior Design | January 2000

ROOM WITH A HUE

's first hotel in Europe, the St Martins Lane in London, represents Philippe Starck's and Anda Andrei's latest fantasy of interactive colored lighting and theatrical interiors.

By Melissa Barrett Rhodes

Philippe Starck, having just arrived at the New York headquarters of Hotels swathed in safety orange hip-hop gear with motorcycle helmet in hand, is describing his concept for the design of the St Martins Lane in London's bustling Covent Garden. It is the first of three new hotels that Schrager is planning to build in Europe, as well as six more in the U.S., all under the creative direction of the French designer known for his irreverently sensational, dream like interiors that at once question and reinvent the hotel experience. Starck's through the-looking glass designs for Schrager's Royalton and Paramount in New York, Delano in Miami, and Mondrian in Los Angeles have, with their trippy Freudian undertones and cheeky sense of humor, struck a chord with the fashionable jet set. With St Martins Lane, London is finally getting a taste of the Schrager/Starck experience so coveted by urban sophisticates across the pond.

Back in Schrager's office, Starck settles into his chair, motions emphatically with both arms, and in his thick French accent delivers his St Martins Lane manifesto: "The idea that I propose is ... Freedom!" His latest design philosophy is preached with typical hyperbole and abstract code, but after a puzzling pause, he elaborates. "I think in the next century, we must remember that the target of our civilization is not to produce product, but it's first to live, to blossom-to be more human and less material." (This pronouncement seems somewhat ironic coming from the world's most prolific and self-promoting product designer. But then again, Starck is a master of irony.) "Today, almost all the product is driven by trend," he continues. "And there is something not very friendly in that. What I want to propose-Freedom!-is the next real and final trend. We have to recognize that we are all different: There is woman, man, gay, black, yellow, small, thin, tall, fat, children, dogs, I don't know what. So the idea is not to deliver a 'complete look,' which I think is archaic, but to create a place which will give all different people the possibility to choose what they want, when they want it."

At St Martins Lane, Starck has provided the tools for his new formula, in the hope that each guest will feel empowered to become the art director of his own staged environment. It's an experiment that one can easily see from the street, as signs of life glow through individual room windows with ever changing guest controlled colored lights-a custom polychromatic system developed for the hotel by lighting designer Arnold Chan. Schrager endorses the hotel's interactive design concept as being part of a modern "shift of power towards the buyer from the seller, which began with the Internet," he says. "People are more in control, things are more personalized-why not try to bring that idea to a hotel room?"

St Martins Lane has fitting roots for the designer's whimsical hotel as theater concept. Occupying a renovated 1960s building formerly home to the original Mickey Mouse Club (no joke) and the famous Lumiere Cinema (which Robert DeNiro is converting into Tribeca London, an independent film center), the hotel has sweeping views of the neighboring English National Opera. Architect Anda Andrei-Schrager's partner since 1985 and president of design responsible for converting Starck's ideas into "a hotel that runs," (which in this case she did in conjunction with Harper Mackey, Ltd.)-says the seven-story, 204 room concrete building was "quite honestly very ugly. But the location was amazing, and it occupied a full block with views all around. We discovered that we could bring the windows in the rooms all the way to the floor-and suddenly, one whole wall could open up the small room to all of London. Another plus was that we could take over the entire ground floor-which was great, because we love to have a lot of public space."

The lobby, a series of six open, connected but very different rooms, is designed to encourage public gathering. Passing through exaggerated, abnormally tall revolving yellow glass doors (touted as the tallest in London), visitors enter the hotel's topsy-turvy world. Visual puns and signature Starck groupings of furniture-formal Louis XVI bergËres, sculptural Indonesian wooden stools, gilded oversized molar teeth chairs, and kitschy garden gnome stools-set the stage for a surreal, Dali esque landscape offset by intentionally minimalist architecture. "The yellow doors are your ticket," says Starck, "the customs gate between the daily life outside and the life we propose. You can stop and say, 'Oh, I love that!' or 'I hate that!' And you start to participate. It's interactive."

At the Light Bar off the main lobby, guests encounter the same polychromatic lighting system used in the guestrooms. "It's a very basic experience," Starck says about the startling colors cascading down from 25 ft. voids upon sections of his trademark communal drinking table. "You will recognize your color and you will naturally go to sit directly under it. It gives you the possibility to become the color, to feel as a color." Schrager admits that at first he doubted the concept: "In the beginning I was skeptical about that light idea," he says. "I thought people would think it was gimmicky. But then it evolved, and it was so well executed, and the colors are so great. And I do believe in the notion that we should give people some measure of control over their surroundings. It's a whole new concept that is about a visceral, emotional experience."

The hotel's five restaurants, operated by restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow (China Grill, Asia de Cuba, Blue Door), also follow the interactive design idea. The 2001 like Sea Bar, an all white seamless marble space with a circular sushi bar piled with glistening ice and with a bubbling water wall installation (an homage to artist Robert Wilson), is Starck's sci-fi interpretation of "an archaic arrangement," he says. "There is a cook, like a sorcerer of the tribe, or Sushi God, in the center. Around him, you have the food. Around the food, you have the people who are hungry. It's a very simple circular structure, and also, within that, each guest can select his place." Asia de Cuba has five interactive 'art columns' beside which one can choose to dine: a chalkboard column for guests to write on, a column of shelves with books to read and televisions to watch, and other columns that showcase rotating artists' installations.

The guestrooms truly promote the concept of personalizing a blank canvas and are thus the least designed, in Starck's opinion: "The rooms are very simple and white because I don't want to decide for you what color or what wallpaper you want," he says. With one switch, each guest can "paint his mood" onto the room's white surroundings, whether it's in a dynamic yellow, fresh pale green, or passionate red. The floor to ceiling windows framing views of the city have two voyeuristic purposes: "It is the only artwork in the room, the view of live London. But, also," he adds, with a boyish grin, "the city can see you, and what color your mood is." The exhibitionistic aspect is not surprising. When asked what color he personally chooses, Starck confides, "Me? It's always very simple. Because I am always deeply depressed, I always choose orange or yellow, to lift my spirits like the sun. And," he adds, whispering while leaning into the tape recorder, "because I am sexually obsessed, and have a very good partner for that, I choose the sexy, sexy purple." With the curtains open? "Yes, but of course!"