The Hotel, Lucerne
Lucerne, Switzerland
from Travel Intelligence

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Address:	Sempacherstrasse 14, CH-6002 Luzern
Telephone:	+41 (0)41 226 8686
Fax:	+41 (0)41 8690

Review

Jamie Dunford Wood:

The much written-up newcomer in Lucerne, rather pretentiously named 'The Hotel', is a deluxe cube very much in the stamp of a single creative force, French architect/designer Jean Nouvel. The big idea here is a giant projection - or rather reproduction, but it has the effect of a projection - of an erotic movie still on the ceiling of each of the 25 guest rooms: John Malkovich writing a letter on Laura Benson's derriere in Dangerous Liaisons, for example. And like all big ideas, or theme hotels, there is a danger it will date. But really, who cares? It is a masterpiece of design and provides a unique experience.

Design-wise, the rooms are rather stark and spare by day, with mostly bold, strong, dark colours - purples, mauves - which Nouvel likes. The brightest, room 5403, is in orange. Nouvel also designed the tall moveable stainless steel TV / Hi-Fi consoles, the doors (mirrored on the inside), the doors and the beds. Floors are of polished teak, the large square-ish skyscraper-style windows are serviced by electric blinds (operated from push button controls) rather than curtains, and great care has been taken with the lighting, but these are spaces that really only come alive at night, when they are undeniably glamourous. Because by day, despite claiming to be a 'park-side resort' (the park in question is a tiny patch of greenery where a few old men play chess on a giant board on the sidewalk), this is a hotel which resolutely refuses to take advantage of the two great natural assets Lucerne has to offer, its lake and mountains, sight of which from the rooms there is none. The corridors outside are dark and concrete, lit industrial style with flourescent strips, presumably to help emphasise the fantasies within the rooms.

However, for daytime comfort the best rooms are the corner junior suites (there is nothing here so banal as a double room, they are all studios or suites), which have two windows and separate showers. All beds are twins next to each other, and the bathrooms have twin sinks in moulded cream. Downstairs is a hip bar (super-hip, according to their brochure), in a city of a recent rash of hip bars, and the inevitable fusion restaurant, the French/Asian 'East meets West' Bam Bou, 'Lucerne's most stylish restaurant'. Is this , as they claim, 'not just a place to sleep, but a reinvention of the hotel experience for the new Millennium era'? With three of the 25 stills coming from Ai No Corrida, it's certainly not just a place to sleep.

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