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Hotel Silken Puerta América
Avenida de América 41, Madrid
2003 - 2005
The first name of this hotel was “Hotel de las Libertades”. So, for Jean Nouvel it was a good opportunity to develop the theme “From liberty to libertinage”.
He decided to create in each room a world of fantasy, inventing the stories of different women in different contexts and different landscapes, and he asked two famous artists and photographers to work on this subject: Alain Fleischer and Nobuyoshi Araki.
Jean Nouvel proposes a sensitive world around the photographs of these artists that spread on the ceiling, on the walls, behind or under the bed…
The space is organized by four sliding panels: the two main sliding glassed doors (parallel to the façade) are printed with two photographs, either by Fleischer or Araki; the two other panels consist of a sliding two-way mirror door and a sliding opaque door with LG product on a face and printed wall-paper on the other face.
Space can be freely organized: one can open the bedroom with the bathroom, the lounge with the bathroom, the bedroom with the lounge…
The surfaces can be polished, matt, brushed, to create a general coherence. The cupboard, the basin, the storage, the shower, the bathtub… are all integrated. The idea is to create one aesthetic, one vocabulary of functional design. In this homogenized universe one can invent all that one wants. Here are exhibited photographs that refer to libertinage, nudity, sensual attitudes. That refers to ghosts, the ghosts of women pictured in photographs.
Here, Jean Nouvel wants to create a coherent but flexible system, an integrated universe that induces daydreams and musings.
(Text: Jean Nouvel / www.jeannouvel.com)