Contract - April 2011 - (Page 33)

Atelier Jean Nouvel won a competition to design a tower on the canal that borders the historic core of Vienna, beating out three other Pritzker laureates with a site-specific landmark. It opened last December as the five-star Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom, named for the Gothic cathedral that inspired its distinctive form. As audacious a building as any Nouvel has done, it makes an important contribution to a city that was once a crucible of modernism and has been lingering too long in a fantasy of old-world charm. A century ago, this was the city of Schoenberg and Freud, Otto Wagner and the Wiener Werkstatte, as well as Sachertorte and the Emperor Waltz. “I’m a real globetrotter, and I spend half my time in hotels,” says Nouvel. “Grand hotels used to be social and cultural meeting spaces: massive buildings you could see from everywhere. That quality has been lost in recent decades. Most rooms look alike, and sometimes I cannot remember where I am. I wanted to enrich Vienna with a work of art.” To achieve that goal, he challenged conventional ideas of a luxury hotel as a symmetrical container with pretentious faux-antique décor. The 12-story block of guestrooms is slightly tilted and raised on columns over a cut-away wedge of meeting rooms, a fitness center, and a winter garden that encloses a stepped terrace. The sloping surface is clad with a grid of colored glass to evoke the bold pattern of tiles on the cathedral roof. There’s a glass walled lobby at the base, and a top floor restaurant is transparent on all four sides. Guestrooms are arranged on three sides of the main block, behind black, white, and gray façades. Service areas to the east are clad in translucent glass. The blank wall of a neighboring block is covered with one of Patrick Blanc’s vertical gardens. Stilwerke, a four-level contemporary design emporium, opens out of a lofty atrium at the center of the building. The Sofitel is alternately rigorous and exuberant, severely monochromatic and playfully polychromatic. Black, white, transparency, and reflectivity are the four threads that Nouvel has woven together. “I was consciously restrained in my use of colors and materials,” he explains. “I wanted to give the whole building and the rooms in particular a certain depth and darkness.” To complement this austerity, he commissioned Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist to create three backlit, painted canvas ceilings that hover over the city like gigantic glowing frescoes— at the base, the top, and the fifth floor to echo the height of older neighbors. It’s an idea that was born in the hotel Nouvel designed in Lucerne, Switzerland, 10 years ago, reproducing stills from Japanese and erotic movies on the ceilings of a converted mansion. Rist has taken the idea much further, incorporating video screens to augment the still imagery. Though her work is contemporary in spirit, she’s unconsciously channeling Adolf Loos, the iconoclastic architect of fin de siecle Vienna, who stripped away the prevailing froth of surface ornament and used rich marbles and wood veneers to create organic ornament in his minimalist buildings. The business center and meeting rooms (opposite) open off the lobby and look out to the street. The Loft, a prestigious restaurant with a raised bar area (above and below), occupies the top floor of the hotel, commanding a 360-degree view over the city. Rist’s backlit canvas mural of autumnal foliage incorporates video screens. Nouvel wanted to create a “work of art” for Vienna with his design of the Sofitel, whose glassenclosed public spaces at the base and top floor glow like a beacon (opposite bottom). www.contractdesign.com contract april 2011 33 http://www.contractdesign.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Contract - April 2011

Contract - April 2011
Table of Contents
Editor's Note
Industry
Resources: Nature Inspired
Focus: A Difficult Birth
Practice: From the Inside Out
Pure Spirit
Sensory Experience
Market Watch
Sibling Revelry
Screening Sophistication
Winter Wonderland
Full of Grace
Designers Rate
Sources
Ad Index
Perspectives

Contract - April 2011