BigShinyThing

The hotel industry seems to be undergoing a phase of unparalleled innovation for a sector that has traditionally been slow moving and rather conservative. Most recently, Simon Woodruffe, the entrepreneur who westernised sushi with Yo! Sushi has turned his attention to hotels. Borrowing yet another Japanese concept - the Love Hotel - Yo! Group has now come up with the Yotel concept. A luxe reposte to the Easy Hotel concept of rooms for same price as a cab fare home, Yotel promises to be:

One of the world’s most radical hotel concepts, and [able to] offer a solution to expensive and boring hotels around the globe while also delivering a wake up call to the hotel industry …

Designed by Priestman Goode, who has helped Airbus define the double deck aircraft of the future, the 10.5m² standard or premium rooms feature:

• ‘Techno Wall’
• Sony flat screen TV with surround sound speaker system
• Wi-fi access
• Choice of hundreds of downloadable movies and CD’s
• Air conditioning
• Double rotating beds (!)
• Ensuite bathroom
• Aircraft cabin mood lighting
• Luxury bathroom fittings including rain shower
• Luxury bedding
• Plenty of storage
• Automated Check in / out

However, the truly revolutionary element of YOTEL is its windows, which are internal rather than external - they look into the corridors, which are in turn naturally lit through reflective mechanisms and channelling of light. This allows YOTEL to boldly go where other hotels simply can’t - tricky central city locations, airports, even underground. The reduced land costs and savings can then be passed on to customers to offer a first class experience at an affordable price.

The Yotel concept has been kicking around for a year or so now. Inital reports seemed to favour a love hotel style retreat in Clerkenwell. That particular vision has now been revised to having the hotels at key airports around the world. Hope it happens.

More detail and visuals are on the Yotel site.

His ideas appear whimsical but pragmatic - a truly human response to the horrors of our times. For instance, in response to 9/11 he proposed that the Twin Towers be rebuilt but with plane-shaped holes at the top enabling future attacks to fly through leaving the building unscathed.

Dedomenici’s proposal explains:

I have formulated a plan to resolve the potential economic conflict of building an Oklahoma-style memorial garden at ground zero - the most expensive piece of real estate on earth.

I propose that the twin towers are recontructed exactly as before - except for two airliner-shaped holes passing through the towers at the original points of impact. Within these spaces would be situated two memorial gardens.

To prevent the possibility of a simliar attack to that of September 11, all US planes would be fitted with tamper-proof technology so that if an aircraft was ever flown dangerously close to the towers again, it would automatically pass through one of the holes.

Dedomenici has also packed himself into a suitcase and been left outside Helsinki Central Railway Station for several minutes without being exploded by the security service.

Most recently, he built a 1980s style nuclear fall out shelter in one of the rooms of the Great Eastern Hotel in London. The luxury bath covered with cling film to prevent contaminated air seeping in is pictured. Dedomenici slept in his bunker for the 14 days of the ‘Stay’ art project, of which it formed a part, and wrote, “The installation toys with the aesthetic of the trashed hotel room, and should be oddly nostalgic, given the current era of asymmetrical warfare.”

Stay ran from 1st and 14th July and featured 14 artists’ interpretations of the hotel space. It coincided with the 7th July terrorist attacks on London.

More details about the artist and his projects are on his website.

Hotel Fox opened in Copenhagen in April of this year. VW and the management of Brochner Hotels invited 21 young artists to totally revamp a former 3 star hotel. Completed in a record 4 months, the hotel has 61 rooms, each with its own unique look. While the artists were busy, a competition recruited the hotel’s chefs and management staff.

The project is truly international with artists from London, Denmark, Berlin, South America, Australia, Paris, Russia, New York .. the list goes on. In addition to the hotel,there is Club Fox - a live cooking theatre (!), and Studio Fox, where eight VW Foxes are being used to create ‘mobile works of art’.

VW has further ambitions. The company’s first university, the AutoUni, is being built in its hometown of Wolfsburg and is set to open in spring 2006.