A special „relax“ centre serving
as an hour hotel was an unusual brief and a big challenge – as well as the given underground space without windows.
The main issues were to avoid vulgarity while meeting all the specific requirements of such facility, how to create
intimacy, how to use existing bare brick walls and vaults without resembling
a medieval torture chamber…
The approach was to create a world of its own, with a mysterious, slightly bizarre yet elegant and most of all intimate mood. The interior is inspired by the aesthetics of David Lynch movies, the main corridor makes a tribute to Under the Skin movie. Intimacy is supported by the play with light. The rough masonry is contrasted by a minimalistic treatment of all the new surfaces united by a solid colour.
To emphasize „luxury“ feeling there is also an additional decorative surface, almost at the edge of a kitsch – which doesn‘t matter in this case…
The visitors seeking an asylum are welcome by inconspicuous street entrance and then led downstairs into the dark
to a safety gate, which is a symbolic threshold. Once allowed they continue
by a long corridor with a slightly confusing lighting that cutting them off from the outside world. At the end there is a light over a reception where they obtain
a key to one of the five rooms.
There are three major rooms, each with
a specific „water feature“ and its own colour theme – a blue one is „Royal“
with a large jacuzzi, a green one is “Relax” with a bath tub, a red one is “Hot” with
a show-of shower. Each of them has also its own stone texture. The last two rooms are smaller, wooden-cladded cabin-like with a bold wood texture.
The rooms are logically dominated by custom-made beds with distinctive fronts, they also feature practical details
in a discreet way – who needs them, finds them. Generally the design is not so much about the specific use of the place,
it’s more about the aim to make a parallel underground world with an appropriate atmosphere where visitors could forget about the life outside, at least for a while…
designed w/ Lenka Míková
