Australian hotel wins World Interior of the Year
Designed by March Studio, Hotel Hotel’s dramatic entry stair was constructed from more than 2150 pieces of recycled timber.
Hotel Hotel’s concierge desk is made from stacked concrete beams.
Hotel Hotel’s library.
March Studio’s design for Hotel Hotel, a contemporary hotel in Canberra, Australia, has been named as the World Interior of the Year for 2015 at the INSIDE - World Festival of Interiors in Singapore. The project has beaten over 100 nominees across nine categories to be named the best global interior of the past twelve months.
The judges described the project as a “masterful integration of different spaces into a seamless and delightful interior.” Located in NewActon, a diverse new precinct in Canberra, Hotel Hotel is part of a wider scheme that encompasses offices, residential apartments, cafes and a cinema. The judges felt that the thoughtful and innovative design creating a “Bilbao effect” that has helped to rejuvenate the area.
The signature element of the hotel is a fragmented lobby entrance, which provides a unique identity for the building. A series of fractured timber pieces line the walls and furniture to create a tunnelling effect that leads guests from the reception through to the main areas of the hotel. The repurposing of the timber in the lobby grabbed the judges’ attention for what they described as a “poetic use of leftover materials [to create a] powerful but not overwhelming” result.
Hotel Hotel also won a National Award for Interior Architecture at the 2014 National Architecture Awards.
March Studio is now the fourth winner of the prize and will return to INSIDE Festival in 2016 to act as a judge for next year’s awards; previous winners include Joyce Wang and David Kohn.
Click here to read a review of Hotel Hotel in the June 2014 issue of Artichoke magazine.
