Hospitality Design - August 2010 - 58

perspectives

interview: nobu hospitality

but I would be presumptuous to assume they can be done. We’ll move forward and see. MT: If you look at this hotel, this is timeless. Twenty, 30 years from now, it will look even maybe better. It’s like good wine. It gets better with age. And that’s what the ﬁrst Nobu, David Rockwell did. If you go today, it’s still fresh and not out dated. That’s what we are thinking about for a hotel. Not too modern. RD: I always think of things not being trendy. We are going to do the penthouse here, and we are going to do it with an artist that designs furniture. The whole idea as he says, the older it gets the more patinaed it gets. And the whole respect for New York and what this area of New York means, that’s the theme. Not tear it down in ﬁve years and redo it. It’s going to last. That’s how I always feel about this kind of stuff—it has a timelessness, a stability, a substance, no reason to change it. You improve it and do cosmetic stuff from time to time, of course, just for the wellbeing, but that’s it. HD: And a place that blends with its surroundings. RD: Exactly. SM: You have to think about the surroundings, otherwise you are putting down the wrong design in the wrong place. There has to be an indigenous fusion of style. TH: We want to have a sense of place. Fun luxury. MT: We want to give the same feel [as the restaurant]. Warm, comfortable, friendly. SM: There is a gap in the market, in terms of coming up with a luxury comfort hotel, with Asian inﬂuences and Japanese touches. There isn’t any other hotel group out there, which has that. Japanese breakfast, Japanese salts in your shower. It’s about service, using products with quality, but it’s about doing it in an individual way. MT: It’s also about bringing in a bit of Japanese culture to the hotel, which nobody has done. You have Chinese, with Mandarin Oriental and Peninsula. You have Aman, which is from Thailand. But there is nothing really luxurious that has come from Japan, and Japan has a beautiful tradition of inns and hotels. Bob has always loved the Japanese culture even before he met Nobu. I traveled with Bob and we stayed at an inn in Kyoto, we always loved this feel. We aren’t going to do tatamis and sleep on the ﬂoor, but you can bring in special things. For the spa, you can do Japanese baths. SM: We don’t view Nobu as a restaurant brand. We view Nobu as a lifestyle brand. The experience you get in Nobu isn’t just the restaurant fantastic food experience, it’s everything else, it’s the show, the theater. And that’s what we want to take through the rest of the hotel, in different spaces, in intimate moments, in bigger

moments, in the spa, in other restaurants, in other bars we are going to create. HD: You say you wanted to make a place where you would want to stay. What other things make a great hotel for you? RD: Service, comfort, and warmth. I am not crazy about hotels that are cold, or some things that are designed for the sake of design and not for functionality. Nobu Matsuhisa: A hotel has to be comfortable. It’s all about the details. For me, a hotel has to be like my master bedroom. HD: Where are you looking to build the hotels? TH: We have several deals we are looking at now in the U.S., in Miami, and in Hollywood in Los Angeles. We are also looking at Europe and the Middle East. And then maybe Asia as a second stage. First we would like to do something in the U.S. RD: I think it is important that the ﬁrst place sets the tone, wherever that is, Miami or LA, or a resort in the Caribbean, whatever it would be. Like this [Greenwich Hotel], it was built from scratch. It was a parking lot before, and that to start over so we could really do what we want. Not to say there are not places you can’t renovate and rework, the one in Miami is such a place, but if I had my druthers, I would rather do it from scratch. HD: We didn’t realize it was from ground up. It’s amazing. It’s such a memorable building already. RD: Like the brick outside we mocked up. I like to mock things up because we don’t really know how they are going to look bigger. We mocked it up in Long Island City where these guys made the brick, just to make sure it would look right and have the right feel. Even the ﬂoors we have here, they have a little give because we put strips in there to make them more like a country feel, as opposed to being hard on your feet. Those kind of details. HD: Who was the architect? RD: Rockwell was the main architect, but it’s been a little eclectic. It’s like a movie script: you bring in one writer in the beginning and you hope it stays that way, but many times, you bring in another writer to work on it, and maybe another, to come up with the creation. It’s different than doing plays where the author is king, and there is no changing anything. HD: Speaking of Rockwell, are you bringing him in for the design of the hotels since he has designed most of your restaurants?

hospitalitydesign

www.hospitalitydesign.com

http://www.hospitalitydesign.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - August 2010