Above & Opposite: Interiors follow the motifs, rich colour palette and ornamentation of the Roaring Twenties
It is this edifice, its history and location that have provided the inspiration for Koncept Stockholm’s design scheme, along with an unlikely link to Hollywood. For it was here in the 1920s that Greta Gustafsson worked as a sales clerk before changing her name to Garbo and rising to stardom. Developing this narrative, Koncept Stockholm surrounds guests with subtle movie references. The bold red of the lobby and its staircase arrangement hint at Wes Anderson’s love of symmetry, as seen in the interiors of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Diamond patterns of crossed metal straps decorating walls and ceilings take their cues from the 1932 film Grand Hotel starring Garbo. Americain is named after Rick’s Café in Casablanca and the film’s palm tree imagery touches Gretas. Corridor carpets have the same pattern as the hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s horror-flick, The Shining. The porte cochère, lit with exposed halogen style light bulbs, adds movie premiere glamour to the entrance and the hotel even has its own cinema, complete with deep-cushioned velvet armchairs and a popcorn machine. This era of glamour and decadence, the Roaring Twenties, is just one of the threads in Koncept Stockholm’s design. It was a time when Art Deco flourished and interiors follow the motifs, rich colour palette and ornamentation of the genre. “Art Deco was an eclectic style and so relatively easy to
modernise,” explains partner Ann-Marie Ekroth, who had fun adding unexpected contemporary twists – or Lady Gaga elements – such as video installations and one-way mirrors. “Quite often we would ask ourselves, do we have enough Gaga?” she says. And there’s humour too. The pale pastels and pineapple lamps of Gretas speak of Miami Art Deco; palm print wallpaper in the gym transports guests to the tropics; Seletti’s monkey lamps clamber over the bar; and avian images decorate the showers. “Birds are the greatest travellers, so you greet a fellow traveller when you step into the shower,” laughs Ekroth. Graphics are an important part of the patterning and Koncept Stockholm worked with local studio 25AH to incorporate them into the design. The logo and typeface reflect both a playfulness and geometric quality adding to the wider Art Deco theme. The logo is repeated subtly in rugs and more obviously in corridor carpets, manufactured by Triwest and Ege respectively. Metal latticework screening to Americain incorporates the bar’s own logo, its linear approach consistent with the hotel’s insignia. Like the bespoke font created by 25AH for the room numbers, much of the graphic design is realised in brass. The sourcing for the project already reveals a great deal of customisation and this continues in the lighting and furnishings, with
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