Five up in the East

The Restaurant at East

Five years ago this week, three friends – Christoph Strenger, Anne-Marie Bauer und Marc Ciunis, combined to create one of the most outstanding hotels in Germany – The East Hotel Hamburg.  Key to its success has been their reluctance to stand still and their willingness to innovate.

A great team is not all that has helped them establish East as the hottest spot in Hamburg.  Star architect Jordan Mozer and his “surreal mixture of East and West, old and new”, combined with an impressive gastronomical offering has made this spot a reason to visit Hamburg.

Congratulations guys from all of us at White Line Hotels.  Here’s to another five great years.

Capella heads 300% Spanish Design Exhibition

Juli Capella curates 300% Spanish Design

Through its 300 original pieces (100 chairs, 100 lamps and 100 posters) showing the rich Spanish contribution to the world’s creative culture, and with prestigious designer Juli Capella as its curator, the 300% Spanish Design Exhibition in Mexico City’s Franz Mayer museum attempts to reveal the creative potential of Spanish design, widely publicising its best designers, brands and companies.

The touring exhibition can be found in Mexico City until the 8th November.

Details on the museum (but strangely not the exhibition) can be found here, while you can check out Juli Capella’s Hotel Omm here.

Whiter than White

Byredo Blanche

Our favourite Swedish brand Byredo, who recently signed a deal to provide the Hotel Skeppsholmen with toiletries, have launched a new perfume called Blanche (White).   With their 8th fragrance to date, the colour white is approached as epitomising the essence of a person who remains unnamed.

According to Byredo founder Ben Gorham:  “The idea for Blanche is, as the name suggests, built around my perception of the colour white. For the first time i actually made a fragrance for and with a specific person in mind.  I wanted to capture her innocent and untainted side, with a fragrance almost transparent in nature. Blanche also represents an appreciation for classic beauty.  The fragrance is pure and simple in structure but extreme in character.”

A 100 ml bottle is priced at 115 € and available at shop.byredo.com.

No more dangling in the bathroom

Load-Ding

If you’re like me – a frequent traveller with a penchant for nice things (or wanting to keep things nice) who somehow always manages to stay in hotels that don’t think about electrical aesthetics., then you’ll share the same fear.

The fear of having to hang your iPhone from the plug in my hotel bathroom, or resting it on the bathroom shelf waiting for someone (normally me after a few drinks) to knock it off.   It seems the guys over at Load-Ding have the same experiences as we do.

The Load-Ding is nothing more complicated than a piece of plastic, flock lined, that creates a shelf using your power-supply.  Simple.

I found it for sale at A+R for $15.  I’ll be ordering mine asap.

Above the Bread Line

Claudio Silvestrin Architects, the team behind our very own Lux 11 hotel in Berlin, are also behind the stunning Princi bakeries in London and Milan.  Claudio recently completed his third Princi bakery on Via Speronia, in the heart of Milan.

The elements involved in the making of the bread – water, air, earth and fire – are strongly present in this work of rigorous geometry and pure, natural materials. Sand-coloured porphyry stone features throughout, with rough porphyry used to texture the wall that faces the stretched 19 meter-long bronze counter.  The roughness is softened by the gentle features of a waterfall and by seven candles, which are placed inside the wall, while recessed spotlights, positioned in the ceiling, illuminate only the bread.  A simple expanse of clear glass is all that separates the customers from the baking process, protecting them from the considerable heat of the exposed fire.

I can’t vouch for the quality of the food in Milan, but during a recent wander around London, I had the chance to sample a little of what is on offer at Princi’s on Wardour Street and damn was it good.  Princi’s serves scrumptious baked goods such as its signature olive bread, alongside hot pasta dishes like spaghetti and lasagna.

Check out some more images of the bakery below, and then head over to our website to see Claudio’s work at Lux 11 in Berlin.