Fifth floor. Fashion which bedecks an interior. Victorio & Lucchino.

Relying on great experience in fashion design, Victorio and Lucchino have dared to make a project of the fifth floor of the Hotel Puerta América. As the result, they managed to create very private and cosy space that makes guests feel comfortable and welcomed.

In the hall, the walls are lacquered in black and the floor is covered in distressed black stone. There are two white marble sphinxes from the designers’ personal collection in the middle of the lobby. The hallways are lined with black carpeting which contrasts with the beige velvet on the walls. Gypsum plumes reinforce the Baroque touch in the decoration.

Sixth floor. The luxury and comfort of simplicity. Marc Newson.

To Marc Newson’s opinion, the project has been an excellent opportunity to improve on all the things that had always bothered him about hotels. In this project, Newson proposes an idea of space where the guests do not feel that they are in a ‘designed space’. Simplicity and comfort are the two adjectives that best describe his design. Space of the lobby and hallways is completely minimalistic and uses reduced palette of materials: wood lacquered a brilliant red for the furnishings and marble with wool carpeting for the floor. The same simplicity also reigns in the rooms where white and grey colours prevail to encourage rest and relaxation. Marc Newson has also designed most of the furniture for this project: bed, table, chairs and a single multi-functional piece of furniture. For the finishes of the bathroom he chose Statuario Venato marble from the Carrara quarries. The bathtub and other pieces in the bathroom were also designed by Marc Newson.

Seventh floor. An interplay of sinuous shapes. Ron Arad.

In the centre of the lobby there is a circular sofa made of reflective fibreglass, foam and Alcantara in anthracite grey. Large LCD screens hang on the walls and display different images. The floor in the lobby and hallways is made of elastic resin, and the ceiling curves downwards, seeming to swoop over the guest, although in reality it manages to creative a cosier, more modern space. The central element in the rooms is a curved, continuous wall, white in some rooms and red in others, that separates different functional zones and acts as a single multi-functional object which provides different functions: in the room it continues as a table and then as a headboard of the round bed. In the bathroom, it turns into a bathtub, a washbasin and a toilet. The shower and toilet have stainless steel ceilings. Arad seamlessly blends both materials, achieving an extremely modern space with a touch of high technology.

Eighth floor. Light in motion. Kathryn Findlay, Jason Bruges.

Space of the eighth floor of the hotel is the result of collaborative work of the architect Kathryn Findlay and interactive designer Jason Bruges. Findlay and Bruges have determined that guests must play with the space and discover it for themselves. First of all, the lobby features a bench in the shape of a small maze. This is a project just waiting for the guest to join in. It is an interactive conception of the space, one of the premises underlying the work of both designers. Fibre optic panels have been designed for the lobby, which Bruges calls Memory Wall and which capture the guests’ movements only to later project a distorted image of them over the panels made with points of colour. The ceiling is a stretched canvas curving outwards, creating a bulbous structure. In the hallways, the designers have created what they call Flock Wallpaper, which reacts to the movement of whoever is walking down the hall. Two projects created exclusively so that guests interact with the space and enjoy themselves. The most noteworthy feature of the rooms is that Findlay refused to consider walls or doors. The separation between the bathroom and the room is made through simple, sweeping white curtains. The entire room is white and forms a single space. Depending on how it is approached, the bathroom is on one side, the closet on the other and the bed is always towards the back of the room. The most remarkable thing about the bed is that it is suspended from the ceiling and does not touch the floor. Its headboard also acts as a desk. The television, placed over the bed, is flush with the ceiling. In the window looking out onto the façade, the architect takes advantage of the space for designing a divan with cushions that span the entire window. The entire space within the room is thus liable to being used. The toilet is the only part that is clearly separated from the room by a translucent glass door.