London hotel gives guests freedom of decoration

April 12, 2000
Web posted at: 1:32 p.m. EDT (1732 GMT)

LONDON (CNN) -- Hotel decor; you can't please everybody -- or can you?

St. Martin's Lane Hotel in the heart of London's Convent Garden has gone into "color therapy," letting guests create their own environments with interactive lights. They can change the lighting in the room to match or alter their moods.

The therapy comes with a price. A standard double room ranges from $317 to $412 per night, according to the hotel.

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"You create your own decoration," says interior designer Philippe Starck, who devised the system. "You choose your color, you choose your mood. ... (If) you are depressed, you put some bright yellow and suddenly you are happy."

Hotelier Ian Schrager, a co-owner of the legendary, defunct New York nightclub Studio 54, admits he was skeptical about the lighting idea. Now, "I love it."

"That's what comes with Philippe's whimsy and sense of humor and that wit and irreverence that he carries in his work," Schrager says. "I love the idea that you can individualize your room."

The goal of the hotel, from the lobby to guestrooms, is to create a place that's stylish without adhering to any particular motif, Starck says. "We show that the ... style of tomorrow is not the style (itself), it's freedom," he says.

'I am red, I am yellow, I am purple'

Starck made the lobby a theatrical space with original creations -- stools that look like teeth, oversized chess pieces and garden gnomes that serve as tables.

"Always the target is to make the people dream," he says. "That's why when you arrive in the lobby, you see a big, big screen and on that we project some strange image. It can be a fish bowl, can be a big wave, can be some clouds, can be some strange silhouette."

Then there's the lobby's light bar. Starck calls it a "pure sensual experience."

"(It's) sort of long corridor that you walk and suddenly you are green," says Starck. "You continue, (then) 'I am red, I am yellow, Oh! I am purple.'

"And you spend your evening in your color. The idea is to take things which open (your) mind, that speak to you -- the colors speak to you."

"Every time I do a project, I always look around and see if (there's) anybody else out there who's exciting. And I go see everyone, but nobody has that little gleam in the eye."
— Ian Schrager, Hotelier

The lobby also features a series of restaurants, bars and public places -- some of them instructional.

For example, the restaurant "Asia de Cuba" has a series of columns, each displaying a different subject like geography or history, creating the overall effect of a university cafeteria. A fusion of Asian and Latino food is served.

St. Martin's Lane is the fifth hotel Schrager and Starck have worked on together, and their first in Europe. Earlier projects include the Paramount and Royalton in New York, Delano in Miami Beach and Los Angeles' Mondrian.

Schrager attributes part of their success to Starck's design genius.

"Every time I do a project, I always look around and see if (there's) anybody else out there who's exciting," Schrager says. "And I go see everyone, but nobody has that little gleam in the eye."

CNN Style Correspondent Elsa Klensch contributed to this report.

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