Hospitality Design - September 2014 - 53

perspectives

places

amsterdam
By Regina Winkle-Bryan, Tamara Thiessen, and JoAnn Greco

1. One of Room
Mate Aitana's
location-inspired
guestrooms,
swathed in shades
of green.

ON THE WATER
Six distinct hotels showcase the variety of
the Dutch metropolis

Although it's a compact city of 800,000
inhabitants a quarter covered by a network of
165 canals, more than six million visitors travel
each year to Amsterdam, helping it achieve one
of the highest hotel occupancy rates of any city
in Europe.
The Dutch metropolis also has a compelling
design scene. New architecture is easily
spotted in developing areas such as Noord,
located a quick ferry ride across the lake IJ
from the city's Central Station. On the banks
of this hip zone is the EYE Film Institute, a
contemporary structure by Delugan Meissl
Associated Architects that resembles a reptile
with a winking eye. And the city may be home
to the first-ever crane hotel. Located in north
Amsterdam's NDSM Wharf, which has become

a culinary-creative epicenter, the Faralda Crane
Hotel boasts three guestrooms by Edward van
Vliet housed in an old crane, which offer heady
360-views some 164 feet in the air. For guests
wanting more of a thrill, they can take in the
vistas from a Jacuzzi that tops the structure, or
they can bungee jump off.
But the Crane hotel isn't the only one upping
Amsterdam's innovative quotient. Here's a
handful of others helping to make the city a
design destination.

Room Mate Aitana > Just across the
water from the EYE, the city's northern docks
are undergoing a renovation, where high-end
condos with river views have popped up over the
past five years. Room Mate-the Spanish hotel
group that currently has 19 properties (affordable
accommodations meant to feel like staying at a
friend's house) and plans for openings in Bogotá,
Milan, Rome, and Rotterdam in the next two
years-opened its first hotel in Holland on the
IJDock last year in a contemporary building
by Dutch architect Jan Bakers. Madrid-based

Tomás Alía designed Aitana's 284 rooms and
public spaces.
"Amsterdam is a Nordic city and therefore
dark, but it's also a green city rife with flowers.
This was the inspiration that led me to the
project's color palette," says Alía. Many standard
rooms are adorned in shades of forest green,
sage, and lime, with carpet in earth tones.
Others are swathed in blue, brown, and plum-
some with a bold stroke of red. Pine and beech
desks add warmth, as do chairs wrapped in
green wool.
Downstairs, the 6,400-square-foot I-Dock
restaurant and bar is fitted in pale blue chairs
and kidney-shaped sofas, and features 20-foothigh windows that look out onto a waterside
terrace. Above the restaurant, the mezzanine
is arranged with several chill-out areas framed
by a 39-foot-high mural in Delftware blue and
white. Large bronze-colored pillars, serving to
"break up the rigid architectural lines present
in the lobby," according to Alía, appear to be
dripping.
"Dutch culture, their craftsmanship, their

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