American hotel brand Bunkhouse and interior design studio Reurbano have used motifs derived from the history of a Mexico City structure when converting it into a boutique hotel.
Hotel San Fernando is located in the Condesa neighbourhood of Mexico City, a largely residential zone that in recent years has seen an influx of national and international travellers.
Bunkhouse and Reurbano have converted a 1940s apartment building into a boutique hotel in Mexico City
Bunkhouse worked with local interior design studio Reurbano to take a 1940s apartment building and convert it into a 19-room hotel, with finishes informed by the neighbourhood.
The face of the structure was restored and painted a light green, with darker green used on the awnings that provide coverage for seating attached to the hotel’s lobby and restaurant, which open to the street through glass-paned French doors.
It features renovated spaces that maintain details of the original structure
An art deco-style logo spells out the name of the hotel above the door. Saint Fernando is known as the patron saint of engineers, and the team wanted to highlight this by maintaining the name of the original building in the branding of the new structure.
“We wanted to honour this building,” said Bunkhouse senior vice president of design Tenaya Hills.
“We love the story and the history and like to imagine what it has been for people over the decades.”
A spiral staircase leads from the lobby to the rooftop
This primary entrance features a metal door with glass panes informed by the original stained glass of the building.
The entry corridor leads past a lobby lounge, with lighting by Oaxaca studio Oaxifornia and furnishings by local gallery Originario; and design studios Daniel Y Catalina, and La Metropolitana, which also created custom furniture for all of the guest suites.
At the far end of the lobby lounge is the restaurant’s bar, which features a large semi-circular cabinet with mirrored back to hold the spirits. A chandelier by local sculptor Rebeca Cors hangs above the clay-clad bar.
French doors feature at the entrance and on some of the rooms
The entrance corridor has green encaustic concrete tiles from the original building. Other original details include the wainscotting and casement windows.
A reception area is located at the end of the corridor and behind it is a circular staircase with metal-and-wood railing that leads all the way up through the building, with landings on each of its five floors, terminating at a terrace on top of the building.
The guest rooms range from single-room setups to multi-room suites, the largest of which are accessed through French doors with opaque windows.
Here the studio departed from the greens used on the exterior and the lobby and utilised soft orange, pink and white paints.
Light colours and hand-crafted goods fill the rooms
Floors in the rooms are either tile or wood and furniture made from light-coloured wood is covered by locally derived textiles. Three rooms on the rooftop level feature furniture designed by Bunkhouse and fabricated by local design outfit B Collective Studio.
Pendant lamps and sconces by local ceramicist Anfora are found in the kitchens and bathrooms.
The rooftop features sculptural breeze blocks
The rooftop features a tiled dining and lounge area surrounded by sculptural breeze blocks, designed to mimic the original building’s patterned stained glass.
Mexican design studios Mexa and Comité de Proyectos contributed furniture pieces for the rooftop.
Other hotels in Mexico include a tile-clad structure in San Miguel de Allende by Productora and Esrawe Studio and a hotel in Mexico City with wooden lattices by PPAA.
Several restaurants and a hotel have opened within Detroit’s historic Book Tower as part of a years-long restoration project of the building undertaken by its developer and architecture studio ODA.
The 1920s skyscraper has undergone extensive restoration work over the past seven years by local developer Bedrock, which has transformed the former office building into a mixed-use space.
Among Book Tower’s restored features are a grand glass dome, which sits over the lobby’s Bar Rotunda
A collaboration with Method Co has led to the first phase of restaurant and bar concepts, which were introduced through the course of 2023.
“We have been ever-mindful of what the restoration of Book Tower means to this city,” said Randall Cook, CEO and cofounder of Method Co, “and we’ve worked hard to create hospitality concepts that will excite and reconnect Detroiters to Book Tower once again, and at the same time honour the heritage of this magnificent property.”
Developers Bedrock worked with architects ODA on the restoration of the 1920s neoclassical building
Located on Washington Boulevard in Downtown Detroit, the 38-storey neoclassical building was designed by Louis Kamper – a prolific and celebrated architect in the city during its Gilded Age.
New York architecture firm ODA was hired to update and expand the programming and existing structures, resulting in half a million square feet (46,450 square metres) of mixed-use space.
Method Co was brought on to conceptualise and operate multiple culinary offerings within the building, including Le Suprême brasserie at street level
The work included restoring the exterior windows and stonework and bringing an ornate domed glass ceiling back to life.
Method Co was then brought on to conceptualise three restaurants and bars, as well as a hotel, and operate each of these venues within the building.
Designed with Stokes Architecture + Design, Le Suprême includes a zinc bar top, hand-made tiles and mosaic marble flooring
Dining options include Le Suprême, a classic French brasserie that offers an all-day menu and both indoor and outdoor seating at street level for up to 210 guests.
Designed in collaboration with Stokes Architecture + Design, the 6,200-square-foot space features a traditional zinc bar top, hand-made art nouveau tiles, mosaic marble flooring and oxblood leather booths.
Furniture and decor were chosen to reflect Detroit’s cultural heritage, and photos on the walls of the Le Mans car race tie to the city’s automobile legacy.
On the 14th floor is Kamper’s, a rooftop cocktail bar designed with ODA
On the 14th floor is Kamper’s, a rooftop cocktail bar designed with ODA comprising an indoor lounge that opens onto an expansive outdoor terrace via large French doors.
The cosy interior has exposed brick walls and dark wood accents, complemented by marble mosaic flooring, antiqued mirrors and velvet drapery.
Kamper’s opens onto an expansive terrace with views across Detroit
Bar Rotunda sits below the glass dome and acts as an all-day lobby cafe and bar, with 70 seats surrounded by ornate architectural details that recall the grand eateries of early 20th-century Paris.
“The space is canopied by a beautifully restored 100-year-old Keppler Glass dome that features more than 7,000 individual jewels and 6,000 glass panels making it an architectural centerpiece,” said Method Co, which also worked with ODA on this space.
Also planned to open soon within Book Tower are sake pub Sakazuki, and izakaya and omakase-style dining spot Hiroki-San.
The hotel component of the building, Roost Detroit, offers short and long-stay accommodation in contemporary apartment-style spaces, alongside The Residences that are purchasable as permanent homes.
The building’s accommodation component, Roost Detroit, is Method Co’s latest iteration of its apartment hotel brand
Roost Detroit is the latest iteration of Method Co’s apartment hotel brand, joining multiple outposts in Philadelphia – including the Morris Adjmi-designed East Market – along with Tampa, Cleveland and more across the US.
The company also operates The Quoin boutique hotel in Wilmington, Delaware, which offers 24 guest rooms within a converted bank building, and the Whyle extended-stay property in Washington DC that was longlisted in the hotel and short-stay interior category of Dezeen Awards 2021.
Roost Detroit offers short and extended stays within contemporary spaces of various sizes and configurations
Downtown Detroit’s revitalisation has taken shape over the past few years, and a handful of new hotels have opened to accommodate visitors who are returning to witness its cultural and creative rebirth.
They include The Siren Hotel, designed by ASH NYC to recall the city’s glamorous past, and the Shinola Hotel, which Gachot Studios designed for the local watch company of the same name.
Dutch hospitality company Aedes has pushed Amsterdam’s building restrictions to their limit to convert a heritage-listed tavern into an all-electric hotel.
De Durgerdam hotel occupies one in a row of almost identical gabled buildings perched on a seawall on lake IJmeer, which together make up the small village of Durgerdam near Amsterdam.
Constructed in 1664, the building originally served as an inn for sailors and fishermen, its white-painted clapboard facade acting as a beacon for boats that could pull right up to its deck in the Zuiderzee bay of the North Sea.
De Durgerdam hotel is set on a seawall outside Amsterdam
Due to recurring flooding, the village was cut off from the sea with the construction of a dam in 1932, turning the bay into a freshwater lake while the inn became a ferry terminal and later a cafe and restaurant.
Following a five-year restoration led by Aedes, the building reopened this year as a boutique hotel with 14 rooms and interiors designed by material research studio Buro Belén.
De Durgerdam, the first hotel to be owned and operated by the Aedes, provided an opportunity to see how far heritage restrictions could be stretched to make the building as sustainable as possible.
The hotel occupies a former inn with a white-painted clapboard facade
“What we have done in terms of sustainability is fairly innovative for a historic building of this kind,” said founder Paul Geertman. “We have pushed the boundaries as far as we could to reduce its environmental impact.”
The 17th-century building now runs on renewable energy – provided by 32 rooftop solar panels and a green energy supplier – and its operations are entirely gas-free.
This was made possible via meticulous insulation and four separate heat pumps, which cover all of the building’s heating and cooling needs in lieu of a traditional boiler.
The ground-floor restaurant integrates a small lounge area
With limited space in the old inn, the heat pumps are dotted across the garden where they are hidden in tiny outbuildings complete with gables and clapboards, which Aedes constructed especially to work around local building codes.
“A heat pump in Amsterdam normally has to be inside of your building, otherwise you just don’t get the licence,” Aedes head of sustainability Esther Mouwen told Dezeen. “So we had to build a house around them.”
The windows posed a similar struggle, as the municipality rarely allows the distinctive hand-blown glazing of heritage buildings to be changed.
But Aedes was able to source an energy-efficient triple-glazed model with a pattern of tiny dots across its surface, which creates the optical illusion of looking at rippled glass.
An Ingo Maurer chandelier hangs above a vintage sharing table in the restaurant
The renovation itself was a balancing act between changing as little as possible about the building while ensuring that it could survive for another 500 years.
Although from the outside, the three-storey building looks almost exactly like it did when it was first constructed, large parts of its structure had to be carefully dismantled and reconstructed.
“The building had deteriorated over time and the structural integrity had been compromised in some areas,” said Aedes marketing manager Monica Hanlo.
“The interiors had to be carefully renovated and restructured, with beams and stones disassembled, inspected and either reused or replaced.”
The bedrooms are finished in a moody colour palette
Where timber could no longer serve a structural function, it was converted into floorboards alongside reclaimed wood sourced from old church pews and demolished timber houses from Austria.
This wood was smoked for 18 hours to create a rich colour that permeates the timber rather than sitting on top like a stain, which would wear down over time and need re-upping.
“Normally, they do not smoke it that long,” explained Buro Belén co-founder Lenneke Langenhuijsen. “Now it will patina super beautifully because all throughout, it became this really dark wood.”
“It was important to us to make well-based decisions, maybe invest a bit more but it’s a long-lasting product that ages with the hotel and makes it even nicer over time.”
De Durgerdam marks the first time that Buro Belén has applied its material research approach to an entire hotel interior.
“We did a lot of research so that the hotel also feels very grounded in what it once was, in its place,” Langenhuijsen said. “And if you look at the Zuiderzee, it was a very important part of the Netherlands, all the villages around made their living from it.”
Layered throughout the hotel’s interior are references to this seafaring history, delivered via an eclectic mix of new, vintage and bespoke elements created by Buro Belén.
A rusty red colour was used to highlight the building’s beams
In the ground-floor restaurant De Mark, framed photos provide a glimpse of the inn’s evolution over the years.
A shaggy curtain frames the lounge area near the entrance, made from traditional flax rope and raw flax fibres that were once used by local fishermen to make their nets.
Weather permitting, patrons can dine outside on the jetty atop lake IJmeer or sit at a long sharing table that forms the centrepiece of the restaurant.
The same colour dominates the guest bathrooms
Overhead, Buro Belén suspended Ingo Maurer’s chandelier Lacrime del Pescatore – or “fisherman’s tears” – made of sparkling crystals that droop from a nylon net.
Its name, according to Langenhuijsen, acts as a subtle reference to the plight of the local fishers, who lost their livelihoods as the village was cut off from the sea.
Upstairs, the inn accommodates three suites and one room, accessed via the building’s untouched original staircase, which still shows the deep grooves that were worn into the wood by thousands of shoes over the centuries.
Ten of the hotel’s 14 rooms are housed in a garden annexe added in 2006
De Durgerdam’s remaining 10 rooms are housed in a garden annexe that was added to the building in 2006. All share a moody colour palette that was drawn from the craft and building traditions of the Zuiderzee.
A rusty red colour – reminiscent of sails treated with tree-bark tannins to prevent rot – was used to highlight key architectural features like the building’s timber beams and the monochrome bathrooms.
Similarly, the inside of the bedrooms’ Shaker-style built-in wardrobes was painted in a sky blue colour that nods to a traditional paint made from buttermilk, chalk and a particular blue pigment, historically used by locals across cupboards and box beds to repel insects.
The hotel’s heat pumps are hidden in tiny gabled outbuildings
Even though construction is complete, Aedes is still working on reducing the hotel’s operational footprint, with the aim of getting 80 per cent of the way towards being zero waste by the end of next year.
The company is also looking into a reliable way of offsetting the building’s whole-life carbon emissions via a reforestation scheme but has so far struggled to find a reliable company that can guarantee measurable, traceable carbon removals.
“We’re not fans of offsetting, because we think we have to make sure we don’t create emissions,” Mouwensaid. “But it’s not possible yet.”
Aedes has previously converted Amsterdam’s art deco Bungehuis building into a Soho House members’ club.
The photography is by Chantal Arnts and Studio Unfolded.
