By Gabrielle Kennedy /asdf 05-09-2008

Inside Design Amsterdam, one of Freedesigndom’s most prestigious chapters, asked Jurgen Bey to participate in its Lloyd Hotel restyling and redecoration project. The Dutchman decided on a collaboration. He invited four of his recent Royal College of the Arts students to rethink their graduation projects according to the brief: to redecorate one room within the hotel.

The students are currently working through the night on Jurgen Bey's personal property in Kraggenburg, a remote village in Holland’s northeast. With only six days to go they all sound optimistic and surprisingly fused on just how this project is going to work.

A small hotel room, four different visions from four different designers from across the globe: Korea, Iran, Slovenia and France. A potentially incohesive mess? “No,” says Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad one of the graduate designers. “We have all used Amsterdam to tailor our ideas and it’s a strong theme that holds everything together.”

Rather than take their products made in and under the influence of London and place them in their new environment, the designers have all remodeled and restaged their concepts to suit the particular dynamics of Amsterdam.

And their disparate backgrounds can be an advantage. A hotel is an anonymous environment that will never feel completely comfortable. By tapping into the aesthetic of designers whose sense of comfort and home differs, the results end up broader, and more all-embracing. Together, they have smashed the hotel-room-as-formula predictability.

The room ELLE Wonen (Inside Design Amsterdam organizers) issued Jurgen Bey is long and thin with two structural alcoves, one for the bed and one for the bath. The students started by removing all the furniture except the bed and the bath and dividing the space into four zones ranging from black at the entrance to white at the window.

The white zone is the domain of Iranian/British designer Hashemi-Nezhad. His approach is twofold: the first explores the role of photography in product design. He spent time on Amsterdam streets taking photographs of people doing every day things: texting, walking, watching, and then over-layed and synchronized the results to create an almost eerie insight into activities that we all take for granted. Imagine a streetscape jammed with commuters all bent forward at the same angle peering at the same tiny gadgets held in the same way.

“It’s about public space and behaviour,” Hashemi-Nezhad says. “How images inform design, how images become statements that are constructed, but which show us how to look at public space.

“And I think it’s really relevant for a hotel. For some guests this is their first point of contact with a city. These images tell them about a city in a different way because they offer information in an aesthetic way, which is half way between decoration and information.”

The furniture Hashemi-Nezhad uses, called Idle Chair, comprises two chairs and a table balancing in an unexpected and awkward way. The point is to invite guests to interact and engage with the objects. “Of course the pieces work in a regular way as well,” he says, “ but you have to make contact with it and personalize it before you can use it.”

The other three designers are So hyun Kim from Korea, Nina Mrsnik from Slovenia and Clémence Seillés from France.

Sixteen rooms in the Lloyd Hotel are all being restyled by different designers. The project will be open to the public for viewing from September 11 -16.

Images: RCA graduates at work on Jurgen Bey's property in Kraggenburg

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