Original Hospitality

Officially opened on 20 September 2017, Hotel Pois Pois in Taipei, Taiwan held its grand opening party for the 2018 New Year, when all the hotel facilities – from the well-appointed guest rooms to the restaurant serving international cuisine, the Velvet Rouge night club and the panoramic roof terrace – buzzed with activity in a multicultural atmosphere spanning design, pop art and vintage styles.
The word most frequently used in guest reviews to describe the hotel is « original ».
The hotel’s distinctive architecture is certainly designed to make it stand out as a landmark, especially at night when the entire building is lit up in the colours red, yellow, pink and white.
Hotel Pois Pois is housed in a historic building in Taipei’s central Da’An district converted by architect Yvonne Tsai for Kingland, a property developer operating in the field of new building design, renovation and large-scale urban planning with activities spanning residential, hospitality and business buildings. Founded in 1997 by businessman Robert Chu, Kingland is a group of investors, managers and design professionals who can offer most of the skills required for large-scale contemporary architecture projects.
With its dot and bubble architecture, the new ten-floor hotel has 35 guest rooms and three small suites. The building itself is encased in a metal frame structure with flamboyant bright red corner fixtures, while the façade stands out for its curious eyelike openings reminiscent of the oculi typically used in historic European architecture. A sea of dots decorates both the solid sections of the metal envelope and the small but visually-striking entrance framed by a red column portal structure typical of Chinese culture.
The highlight of the building is the panoramic roof terrace offering magnificent views of Taipei’s famous 101 Tower with its shape reminiscent of bamboo or the spire of a pagoda. The hotel’s interior design is marked by strong contrasts, the brightly-lit pale-coloured rooms standing apart from the three suites with their lively botanical and floral decorations. In the large spaces of the Ch-Eat bar and restaurant, the white of the tables, chairs and countertop contrasts with the blue of the sofas and the various shades of grey present in the veins of the Tipos collection ceramic tiles from Ceramica Sant’Agostino, which extend seamlessly along the restaurant walls and floor as far as the hotel foyer.
Everywhere there are items of contemporary design such as the Tatlin sofa, but the real highlights of the building are the suspended Bubble Chairs used in the guest rooms for seating and in the restaurant as ceiling fixtures, perhaps as a tribute to the celestial spheres of design!
Tiles from the Tipos collection are also used outside the main entrance and on the steps and surrounding walls.