Designocracy Hotel

The Prizeotel is the result of a moderate investment: 1.5 million euro to design and build a 3,200 square metre space including a lobby with reception area, two lounge bars and 150 rooms. According to the architect, the challenge was «to create an intelligent and economical concept that would be both pleasant and appealing. The design allowed us to optimise the choice and use of materials and furnishings to achieve maximum visual impact from a minimal investment, offering guests a simple and enjoyable temporary experience for just 59 euro per night.»
The hotel deploys an exemplary repertoire of Rashid’s design vocabulary: fluid spaces, bright positive colours, furnishings with soft volumes, plays of graphic design and patterns, textural mixes like a continuous tactile invitation. The starting point is the reception zone, a place with strong communicative power. Behind the glass desk rises a ceramic wall with sinuous and luminous graphic elements that create a vaguely seventies tapisserie effect. This is one of the two custom proposals created by Ceramiche Refin to a design by Rashid exclusively for this project. The 60×60 cm porcelain tiles feature a wavy line pattern, creating a continuous movement on the surface that imbues the space with dynamism. A special texture, produced in two colour versions — green lines on a black background (wall) and silver lines on a white background (floor) — reveal the designer’s unmistakeable graphic exuberance. It is the same exuberance that characterises the R+evolution tile collection which he designed in 2008 for DesignTaleStudio (the company’s creative workshop) and has been used in some rooms in the hotel. «The tiles served to add colour and graphic personality to the simple bathrooms: the pattern breaks up the uniformity of the surface and leads the observer’s gaze through the room.» The fluid lines appear to move — as though through a natural rhythmic expansion — from the ceramic surfaces to the coloured carpets in the lounge area, continuing along the sinuous green sofa in the lobby and then on to the carpet in the corridors on the various floors, which together with the wave pattern also bears the room numbers. This once again demonstrates the aesthetic and functional versatility of ceramic tiles, which are perfectly capable of participating in the overall definition of an interior design project, in harmony with other materials of different consistency such as the resins and wallpapers used here. There were clear technical reasons for the choice, Rashid explains. «I chose high-performance materials that are easy to maintain, age well and meet the high German energy standards that favour recycling, which is why I made extensive use of ceramic tiles and textile coverings.»
A wealth of visual and tactile materials, graphic spirit and strong colour counterpoints are the devices used by the New York designer to lend character to a fairly uniform space. The common areas on the ground floor are divided into an open space that extends longitudinally, where the pure white of the dining room is lit up by bright green walls, and a woman’s face reproduced on the wall gazes out over the round, silver easy chairs. The rooms are simple and white with bright splashes of colour (the doors and floor are green, the lamps and chairs purple), while the furnishings are reduced to a bare minimum. But everything has been designed down to the smallest detail, from the music created or selected by the architect (Rashid is also a renowned DJ) to the shampoo, from the logo to the staff uniforms, from the hotel website to the TV system that enables guests to check out directly from their rooms.
The Prizeotel project won the commercial architecture category of the 2010 edition of the Ceramic Tiles of Italy Design Competition. So it is an award-winning hotel, in both name and fact.