Hospitality Design - September 2012 - 113

1. Black and white
dominate at the Selman
Marrakech.
2. The Selman’s
dramatic pool area.
3. A rendering of the
lounge at the Hermitage
Hotel in Jakarta.
3
renovation of the lobby, and then the east tower,
which contains the bulk of the rooms.
don’t step on the foot of the operator. But I’m
bringing in a certain expertise, not only in the
repositioning of the entire product, but also my
renovation skills. It’s a growing facet of my work
since hotel companies are seeking a more holistic
approach to re-inventing existing properties.
The question here is, how do we transform
a hotel which has been perceived more like a
4-Star, tired hotel, which has not had any kind of
refurbishment in the last fiſteen, sixteen years,
and reposition it into a 5-Star hotel? Particularly,
we’re dealing with the west tower with 153
keys. My vision as well as the chairman’s is to
reopen as a luxury hotel within a hotel—it will
be rebranded the ONE UN New York. We have
a separate entrance, but shared public areas. So
we are handling marketing, projecting a different
image, and then, on the physical side, it’s literally
guiding them through the whole exercise of the
renovation and helping them project manage.
Next will be the restaurant, a more extensive
How is this one different than any other
hotels you have worked on?
The other hotels I have done are a litle more
intimate, architecturally more interesting. But
this is quite interesting in it’s own right. The New
York Times had writen something about the
renovation, and the writer’s take was that here
is an interior that is almost completely as it was
in the seventies, so should it be protected? I’m a
great fan of mid-century furniture and I collect
it, but on the other hand, you can’t keep certain
interiors because they look too tired. And we
would never get the kind of clientele that we
want to go aſter if we don’t do something drastic.
Another new hotel in your portfolio
with a dramatic interior is the Selman
Marrakech.
It’s [designed by] Jacques Garcia. We didn’t get
very involved on the design side because it was
more or less decided. I have to say that compared
to the Mamounia [another hotel in Marrakech
by Garcia], which is of course a landmark and
needs to be very garish because that was what it
was before, this one is much more toned down.
All the mosaic is black, white, and gray marble,
beautifully carved and handcraſted—all of the
craſtsmen that Garcia used are the best in the
country. For me it creates an emotion, no mater
if you like it or don’t like it.
Creating an emotion, is that luxury
today?
Authenticity is still very much key, at least it’s
my philosophy. I really like when I’m creating a
space that is relevant to where it is: the city, the
culture, the language. And I always try to reflect
whatever the art or architecture of the area is—
what elements of the history can we bring back
to the table? It’s funny when I read interviews in
magazines and people are saying the same thing
as me and then you see their hotels and they look
totally corporate, like they could be anywhere.
So in New York, it has to look like it’s a New
York product, and Selman should look like it’s
in Marrakech. And now we are doing a hotel
in Jakarta, the Hermitage Hotel. It’s located in
Menteng, an exclusive tree-lined neighborhood
which is adjacent to the heart of the city, full
of beautiful historical mansions and houses,
including the embassy quarter where this hotel
is located. It’s in one of the historical Dutch
buildings, dating back to the thirties, so it has a
bit of Art Deco architecture. I try to spin the story
around that—we are collecting antiques that
bring back the Dutch furniture—but we tried to
create that without being overpowering either.
The owners picked interior designer Thomas
Elliot of PAI Design who’s based in Jakarta and
works mostly in residential, but he’s very used to
building luxury houses for all these very wealthy
people. It’s not the first time that we worked
with designers that have never done hotels. It is
a risk, but it’s one that we’re willing to take if we
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