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Hotel Hotel
Hotel Hotel, a new boutique accommodation offering in Canberra's New Acton precinct, is the result of an extensive collaboration involving over fifty designers, architects, and artists. Located within Nishi, a mixed-use building, the hotel aims to transcend the sum of its individual design elements by engaging with complex urban systems, emphasizing diversity, sustainability, urbanism, arts patronage, and community development.
The dramatic entry experience features a staircase designed by March Studio, constructed from more than 2,150 pieces of recycled timber. This intricate design element provides a striking contrast of rustic and baroque, high-tech and low-tech, and represents the project's multifaceted approach. The developer, Molonglo Group, intentionally fostered a pluralistic design process, believing that multiple voices and creative input, even if initially messy, lead to a richer and more challenging outcome.
The hotel lobby, described as vaguely subterranean, showcases custom-developed furniture and objects by Broached Commissions and designers like Lucy McRae, Adam Goodrum, and Charles Wilson, alongside curated mid-century pieces by room designer Don Cameron. While Fender Katsalidis Architects and Japan’s Suppose Design Office designed the Nishi building, and March Studio was responsible for the lobby, the various design strands successfully integrate into a cohesive guest experience.
Molonglo Group and Don Cameron collaborated to establish a sensibility for the hotel, drawing inspiration from the romantic ideal of the Australian shack. This concept translates into a focus on authenticity and sustainability through the use of enduring, quality materials and vintage furnishings. The aim was to create hotel rooms that feel like a home – inviting, tactile, and designed to age gracefully, similar to a cherished leather jacket or pair of shoes. The lobby features expressed materials like lightly finished timber and raw concrete, while the rooms offer textured surfaces, autumnal colors, and carefully tempered lighting to evoke a sense of being transported.
Beyond its interior aesthetics, Hotel Hotel's genius lies in its holistic understanding of urban ecology. Situated above 220 private apartments, the hotel's lobby functions as a semi-public arcade with a cafe-bar and retail tenancies, supporting the amenity for both hotel guests and permanent residents. The Nishi building also houses a cinema and a 6-Star Greenstar office, providing recycled water and other services to its neighbors, further integrating the hotel within a broader sustainable and community-focused environment. The Molonglo Group emphasizes breaking down traditional boundaries of development to create truly great places that benefit the entire neighborhood.
Through the work of numerous skilled individuals, Hotel Hotel is characterized by meticulous design and subtle details. However, it is the Molonglo Group’s deep appreciation for the intricate systems that define successful urban environments that truly elevates the project, allowing it to surpass the individual excellence of its components and contribute significantly to Canberra’s burgeoning New Acton precinct.
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