St Martins Lane Hotel 
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45 St Martins Lane
Covent Garden London
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| Description |
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The St. Martins Lane hotel in London's West End, Henry Porter explores a Kubrickian lobby, an Asia de Cuba restaurant, and 204 rooms painted with colored light, to find out why this partnership keeps drawing a full house.
"This is not about decoration: it's about feeling," says Philippe Starck as we prepare to enter the huge, as yet unpowered revolving door of the St. Martins Lane, the new hotel developed by Ian Schrager in London. He waves me through with Gallic impatience and then pushes on the door so that we are both released from the yellow cylinder into a large, dazzling white lobby.
What tittle decoration there is is jokey and random. Three pottery gnomes, which serve as squatting stools, are grouped in battle formation, and an 18th century style desk stands some way off to our left. I mention that the lobby reminds me not only of the Schrager owned and Starck designed lobby of the Mondrian hotel in Los Angeles, but also of the last scenes in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the astronaut is seen sitting in a white time void with pieces of ornate furniture. The idea pleases Starck, who has been in full flow about entertainment and the humorlessness of most design. "Trend is not interesting," he said as we reached the renovated building in St. Martin's Lane. "When someone arrives here and goes through the door, it's an experience. The door is the gate between the outside life and the possibility of inside. People can dream here; they can be smarter, be more stylish."
St. Martins Lane is Schrager's first London hotel. It is set in the West End theater district, in an office building which on the ground floor once housed the Lumière movie theater, and the less mourned Café Pelican. With just 204 rooms it is smaller than most of Schrager's American hotels, but the public spaces are airy and full of Starck playfulness. Directly across the lobby from the entrance is the hotel bar, which plunges back into the building like an infinity of mirrors and is lit by huge color voids above the tables. To the left is the Asia de Cuba restaurant, where Starck (who also designed an Asia de Cuba for Morgans in New York) says he has drawn inspiration from the Belgian Congo of the 1950s-which, although he insists it is true, seems to me to be a joke, because in truth the restaurant is a mêlée of styles and whim that is pure late period Starck. Each space has a distinct, if rather indefinable, character, and it is obvious that Starck has been at pains to resist the lures of decoration and theme. The brasserie style St. M and the Sea Bar, on the right side of the building, owe something to the understatement of the successful neighboring restaurants J. Sheekey and the Ivy, but the whole feel is younger and more surprising. |
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| Location |
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Nearest Tube: Covent Garden
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| Hotel Facilities |
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Restaurant
Lift
Health Club
Gym
Conference Facilities
Concierge
Car Park (NCP on-site)
Business Centre
Bar & Lounge
Bar
24hr Reception
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| Room Facilities |
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Satellite Channels
Refrigerator
Radio
Non-smoking rooms
Mini Bar
In-room safe
Hairdryer
En-suite Bathroom
DVD / CD Player
Direct Dial Telephone
Coloured 'Mood Lighting'
Colour TV
Central Heating
Broadband Internet (Free)
Air Conditioning
24hr Room Service
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