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Nobu Hotel Barcelona
By : Rockwell Group
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 16th edition
Discipline : Interior Design
Categories : Other categories in interior design / Unclassified Category in Interior Design : Gold Certification
Capturing the unique essence of the famous European city while reflecting the brand’s core aspirational lifestyle offering, the hotel is a refurbishment and renovation of the former Gran Hotel Torre de Catalunya. The hotel offers guestrooms and suites along with meeting rooms, event spaces, and a restaurant.
Our firm took inspiration from iconic Spanish design, such as the mosaics in Park Guell by Gaudi, and traditional Japanese crafts, such as Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, to create a collage of materials, textures, and spaces.
The entry is quiet, mediating the boundary between the hotel and the street with a garden of tall bamboo trees behind a rammed earth-inspired wall. Shinto gates are abstracted around the entry vestibule in the form of bright orange, woven screen, which continues inside to create porosity between outside and in. The double-height lobby features textured
limestone and wood. A large piece of art behind the check-in desk features a dramatic brushstroke. A small lounge exists between the lobby and bar, and the bar and main lobby lounge flank the lobby as two minimal gridded wood pavilions. A grand stair connects all the public areas (ballroom, meeting rooms, lobby) and is accentuated by a large art piece
that is suspended in the stairwell. The monumental, rough stone lobby bar is lined in pale, gridded wood with simple joinery. Cracked stone with gold infill covers the faces of the central columns. The lobby lounge has a similar gridded wood framing to the bar, but stained indigo blue.
Guest corridors have a vibrant, saturated gradient of green to blue wallcovering. A large, continuous brushstroke on the carpet guides guests to their rooms. In the guestrooms, a
millwork wall with geometric bronze framing has a closet, TV, bar, and desk. Bronze detailing also defines the bed area, which has a wood and leather headboard and footer. A custom plaster art piece hangs above the headboard. Bathrooms have luxurious slabs of stone and travertine with bronze inlay details and frameless glass panel showers. Suites (2
bays or 4 bays) have sofas that sit on plinths and millwork in saturated lacquer colors, with an overall moodier feel than the guestrooms. The Presidential suite has a central, sculptural Japanese tea hearth made of rough carved stone. Bathrooms feature slab stone and cedar wood, and include a traditional Japanese soaking tub separated from the
shower area by ceramic tile screens.
The Restaurant sits atop the building with 360-degree views of the Catalan Capital. A kintsugi-inspired ceiling has suspended live-edge walnut panels with gold “cracks” in between. A cracked blue ceramic ceiling over the backlit onyx bar complements columns clad in highly sculptural blue and white ceramic kintsugi-inspired sculptures. The sushi bar has river rock feature wall.
Collaboration
