Challenge
Originally constructed in 1929, the historic Lennox Hotel in downtown St. Louis was renovated into a creatively designed national brand hotel. The national brand challenged the design team to create a modern hotel that blends the standard features that their guests expect into the existing historic character of the building.
Solution
All of the guestroom elements were designed to create contrast against the building’s historic features while all built-in elements were chosen to have a sleek, timeless massing and materiality, mixed with mid-century-modern, allowing the building’s historic features to stand out on their own. All built-in elements were composed of straight, plain surfaces featuring simple, light-colored materials, contrasting with the heavily ornate dark wall paneling and colorful stone wainscoting and gilded metals. The design team introduced bold, bright accent colors in the smaller-scale furniture to further enhance the contrast between the heavy, ornate existing materials and the new, sleek update. Outdated lighting was also replaced with more timeless fixtures to bring out the elegance of the architecture.
