Month: October 2007

Paris: Hotel Everland, The One Room (One Suite) Cube Hotel has arrived.

Hotel Everland Paris 01
Hotel Everland on top of the Palais de Tokyo
Hotel Everland Paris 02
Wow! What a view from your room on the Eiffel Tower!

From the roof of the Leipzig Gallery of Contemporary Art the one room (one suite) Hotel Everland has moved to the roof of the Paris Palais de Tokyo where it will receive guests for an overnight stay and museum visitors during the day until the end of 2008.

In an interview with the Australian News Com Swiss artists Sabina Lang who with Daniel Baumann forms the duo “L/B” that created the artsy Hotel concept, commented:

“It’s what we thought of as an ideal hotel room,” Ms Lang said as she watched a giant crane being prepared to winch the prefabricated green unit up from the back of a truck.

Hotel Everland, originally conceived for Expo 2002, has already spent 18 months at the Gallery for Contemporary Art in Leipzig. But the view from the Palais de Tokyo, incorporating the Paris skyline and the Eiffel Tower, is of a different kind from the east German tower block guests saw there.

“You shouldn’t need a television,” Ms Lang said.

She said it was important for the work to be an actual hotel as well as a part of the museum. Guests pay Euro 333.- (currently $526.86) a night during the week and Euro 444.- (currently $702.48) at weekends, a comparable rate to other hotels in the chic 16th arrondissement, with charges used to cover running costs.

Guests book online at the Hotel Everland site but stay only for the night after closure of the museum. During the day, the room can be inspected by museum visitors.

Reservations, which opened at the start of October, have been brisk and the first two months are already booked out. But the two artists have not been tempted to change trades and abandon art for the hospitality industry.

“It’s absurd to have a one-room hotel and it’s never going to be a success as a business plan,” Ms Lang said. “We just like to play around with the idea of exclusivity and luxury.”

Mexico, Zacatecas: Luxury Small Hotel in a Bullring

Zacatecas
Serene Pottery Scene where once the bulls roamed
Zacatecas

Back to Luxury Hotels:
Quinta Real Hotels is a chain of presently 9 luxury hotels. For me the Bullring turned into an all suite hotel in Zacatecas in the province of Zacatecas with 36 Master suites, 13 Grand Class suites and 1 presidential suite is a true boutique hotel. I have put it on my wish list.

Shocking Hotel Art: "Iraq War Memorial: Death of Prince Harry"

Trafalgar Hotel
Trafalgar Hotel

This weekend the London Trafalgar Hotel served as podium for Bridge Art Fair, a Chicago-based arts programming organization Bridge, NFP which organizes annual Bridge Art Fairs in Chicago, Miami and London.

As Part of The Bridge Art Fair Capla Kesting featured Iraq War Memorial: Death of Prince Harry.

Iraq War Memorial Prince Harry
Iraq War Memorial: Death of Prince Harry

by Daniel Edwards, well known for controversial sculptures, which include a nude, autopsied Paris Hilton, a graphic interpretation of Britney Spears giving birth and “Fidel Castro’s Deathbed Portrait”.

The Capla Kesting Press release explains it as follows:

LONDON, England – A war-mutilated Prince Harry is the symbolic fallen hero in a memorial honoring those willing but unable to serve in the Iraq conflict. Harry, brother to Britain’s future king, was poised to be the most celebrated soldier of the Coalition forces, but due to the “specific threats to kill or kidnap him,” he was kept home. However, Prince Harry will be remembered for his intended tour of duty in a memorial to be unveiled at the Trafalgar Hotel October 11th courtesy of Bridge Art Fair.

“Iraq War Memorial featuring the Death of Prince Harry, the Martyr of Maysan Province” draws inspiration from Harry’s willingness to sacrifice for his country, and the sympathy for his disappointment of an unfulfilled patriotic aspiration.

“This war memorial is dedicated to the brave at heart,” said spokesman David Kesting. “But the brave men and women Prince Harry inspired to enlist for combat following his announcement to serve six months in Iraq are not forgotten.”

The Memorial features Prince Harry laid out before the Union Jack with pennies placed over his eyes and head rested on the Bible. The statue suggests the tragic outcome of a confrontation in Iraq’s Maysan Province with the Iranian weapons smugglers for whom Harry’s tank regiment was scheduled to patrol. Prone with his unfired gun still holstered, Prince Harry is represented clutching a bloodied flag of Wales, and holding to his heart a cameo locket of his late mother, Princess Diana, while a desert vulture perches on his boot. Harry’s head is earless, denoting the explicit threats against the Prince from militia leaders saying they planned to send him back to his grandmother “without his ears.”

A bronze casting of Prince Harry’s “severed ears” also set for display at the Trafalgar Hotel will be offered on eBay.

Harry had stated he would leave the army if he was left in safety while his regiment was sent to a war zone. “Prince Harry’s spirit must have died the day they told him he couldn’t serve,” speculates New York artist Daniel Edwards. “That’s what this memorial is about.”

Like Paris’s Victor Noir Memorial, security for the Prince Harry Memorial will guard against vandalism from expected throngs of admirers believing luck in love and fertility may come by kissing the lips of the memorial to England’s reputed playboy “pinup prince.”

They even set up a website: Prince Harry memorial

There they claim the visitors comments were much more positive than the Press and the reactions on Internet:

The opening for the public was great. For all the negative press that we got and brandishing on the website NO ONE MADE A NEGATIVE COMMENT. Actually it was quite the opposite of what was said about it online. People responded very positively to the work. Remarking on the various details of the piece, like the locket, the holstered gun, the roses in his helmet and pound coins on his eyes. I think we had close to 500 visitors and no one had a negative thing to say. People really enjoyed the work and made numerous positive remarks commenting on their stance regarding the war, pubic service and the royal family.

The website features a picture of the London Towncrier who reportedly was responsible for announcing Harry’s birth:

Towncrier
The London Town Crier

I believe it is a great eye opener and reflection on present times.

What do you think?

El Blog de un Hotel: A Blog to Market a Hotel Under Construction!

El Blog de un Hotel 01
El Blog de un Hotel (A Hotel’s Blog)

My Blogger friend Albert Barra pointed me to El Blog de un Hotel ie A Hotel’s Blog. [ed: since the opening of the hotel the Blog has been discontinued and removed]

Not that I am able to read or write Spanish, but with the help of Google Translate (Beta) I can at least assume I know a bit about what El Blog de un Hotel is posting about.

I like the concept: The Hotel talks to the reader while being built and is meandering in its posts the same sort of way I am meandering myself in this Blog. It keeps its name and brand and location secret. It will be located in Spain and will open 365 days after the Blog started. As the Blog started September 25, 2007, the hotel will open in September 2008.

The last post shows us interesting Artist Impressions of the mystery hotel’s design like this:

El Blog de un Hotel 02

It features two clever ways of building traffic:

  1. If you Blog about me, I will give you a link back: So Bloggers link to me!
  2. If you guess me out, You may gain a freebie hotel night …..

Both may create their own buzz, or maybe even hype….

I will follow the developments with interest.

Last edit August 2009:
Alas the Hotel is the Madrid Eurostar, but it appears the blog has been wiped.

The landing page says: Translated via Google:

Blog of a Hotel

Hola a todos.
Hello everyone.

Como sabéis ya soy una realidad. As you know I’m already a reality. El pasado 9 de enero abrí mis puertas para empezar a recibir huéspedes. On January 9 I opened my door to start receiving guests. De momento todo va muy bien, pero estoy desbordado de trabajo: coordinando los montajes de las habitaciones, controlando la calidad de mis desayunos, poniendo a punto mi Well Health Club y dando una cálida bienvenida a todos los que ya han querido conocerme.
At the moment everything is going very well, but I am overwhelmed by work: coordinating the assembly of the rooms, checking the quality of my breakfast, my point being Well Health Club and giving a warm welcome to all who wanted to know.

Por todo ello, y lamentablemente, me será imposible seguir manteniendo activa esta bitácora . Therefore, unfortunately, I will be impossible to keep this blog active. Hemos compartido mucho juntos, he aprendido un montón de vuestros comentarios y espero que, a lo largo de este año vosotros también hayáis disfrutado con mis comentarios y descubriendo mis interioridades.
We shared a lot together, I learned a lot from your comments and hope that throughout this year you also you have enjoyed my comments and finding out my insides.

Ya se ha empezado a contactar a los ganadores de los diferentes premios, pero si estáis impacientes, podéis enviar un email a.
Has already begun to contact the winners of the awards, but if you’re impatient, you can send an email to email

Como dicen los humanos, esto no es un adiós sino un hasta pronto.
As the human, this is not a goodbye but a see you soon.

…It was a very nice and creative example of marketing via a blog… I am really surprised they simply threw away all the good work…

Veerle

Veerle Self Portrait
Photo © Veerle Pieters

Veerle Pieters is a Grapic/Web designer based in Belgium, a talented photographer and founder of Duoh!, a dynamic print/new media and web design company, based in Deinze –near Ghent, Belgium, She has an impressing portfolio.
Veerle’s Blog 2.0 is always interesting to read. The Blog covers a myriad of subjects that interest me as well, like:

  • struggling with Photoshop, Illustrator and sequels (as I struggled to crop her photo that I borrowed from her Flickr account);
  • well illustrated pondering how to furnish your terrace;
  • how to design your bathroom

    • and

  • many others

Enjoy!