![]() ![]() “The overarching concept we developed for the public space here was to create a ‘living room’ for the city, a communal space where locals and guests can feel equally at home,” says Gachot Studios partner and cofounder Christine Gachot, explaining the firm’s approach to the lobby in this hotel from Detroit-based fashion accessories and watch brand Shinola. Top: Santa Monica Proper hotel by Kelly Wearstler. With their mood lighting, comfy sink-into furniture, intimate seating arrangements, phone-charging stations and first-class art, today’s lobbies want you to feel at home, not on the run. In fact, they have become so inviting that residential design can take cues from well-appointed lobbies. ![]() Today’s lobbies perform a multitude of functions that entice you to stay put: They house fine-dining destinations and cafés built for enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee they host casual business meetings and date nights for style setters they’ve become hangouts that serve as public interfaces with a neighborhood. The paper’s architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote that lobbies had become “something else entirely: a space intended to grab our attention, to make us stop, linger, look - and in all probability spend money.” As early as 1983, the New York Times noted the phenomenon. Interior designers got to ramp up their budgets for these spaces, allowing them to create rooms designed not just for living but for lingering. By the end of the 20th century, however, and certainly in the beginning of the 21st, the idea of the lobby as little more than a pass-through was as antiquated as celluloid film.Īs developers realized - and then capitalized on - the revenue-generating potential of ground-floor real estate in hotels, office towers and luxury apartment buildings, lobby design underwent a complete reimagining. Just think of the revolving door sequence from the 1932 movie Grand Hotel, in which guest after guest cycles through the rotating portal like it’s a perpetual motion machine. July 4, 2021Time was when lobbies were merely transient spaces, rooms in which one spent the most fleeting moments - checking in at a front desk, getting to an elevator, awaiting an assignation. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |