BRIEF
Local architecture and design studio ABERJA was given the brief to design the interior of the new Lindenberg hotel including facade and landscape design to achieve a coherent overall design language. LINDENBERG has seen itself as a pioneer of co-living, for which access plays a greater role than ownership. Depending on their wishes and plans, guests are invited to move between areas with a particular purpose and dive into those communities. In this way the designed spaces should reflect the social need for communal living and working. A new quality of life, accompanied by a sense of togetherness, balanced with the possibility of individuality.
DESIGN CONCEPT
LINDLEY’s guest rooms are intended for sleeping, showering and retreating. Everything else is made accessible across the shared living spaces. The rooms quality is not determined by size, but rather by the finesse of the furnishings, considered design, a thoughtful colour concept and high-quality materials. When guests wish to venture beyond their own four walls, a large number of shared living spaces and common areas await, spread over seven floors: „picking sorrel in the herb room, listening to records in the Parlour, schnapps and celery carbonara served in the restaurant, a concert being performed in the Panopticon, an indoor tree for reading under, oven-fresh sourdough at the bakery, a Martini at the bar on the fifth floor, birdwatching on the rooftop terrace and a yoga session in the fitness club“ In all their colourful diversity, the shared living spaces are the counterpart to individuals’ own living rooms, kitchens, dining rooms, hobby rooms and offices. These communal spaces form the core of the project and create an iconic image with the colorful ‚Wunderkiste‘.
The interior and design concept is stylistically inspired by an imagined transition from Art Nouveau to Art Deco. A finely-tuned dualism between the decorative playfulness of Art Nouveau and the new sobriety of Art Deco, translated to the present. Materials and elements are transferred from the beginning of modernity to today’s cosmos, and experience a renaissance within it.
Alongside the colour palette, the building’s interior design impresses with its precise lines, arches and patterns. The blueprint for this leitmotif is THE GRID, which is reflected in almost all areas of the project upon close inspection – an unobtrusive formal language that references the aforementioned style epoch for today. The fit out is a contrast between old and new elements – striving for a mix of mostly contemporary objects with a few epoch-spanning originals. A wide variety of vintage Thonet chairs, collected by the team over the years, have been refurbished and are displayed on all floors and are paired with contemporary design furniture and custom designed furniture by studio ABERJA. The materials convey an eclectic albeit always unobtrusive overall impression: dark, coarse mastic asphalt flooring meets warm walnut wood elements, such as walnut parquet embedded in the floors and wall panelling, alongside custom-designed diamond-shaped tiles and Wiener Geflecht. Copper is used throughout all the areas, whether subtly integrated into objects or as a robust kitchen block in the restaurant. Textiles from Sierra Leone, produced exclusively for the project, deliberately break away from the otherwise-subdued colour scheme and decorate the rooms in the form of pillowcases, hairdryer bags and slippers.
LINDLEY is playful, inventive and yet consistent in its spatial arrangement, colour scheme, choice of materials and design language. Lindley is a centre of attraction in the previously industrial area in the east of Frankfurt. The brightly coloured ‚Wunderkiste‘ sets an iconic sign for the district, revitalises and invites to become part of the LINDENBERG community. The design concept deliberately combines all areas, from the gardens to the façade, interior and decoration, to create a harmonious whole. The high quality of materials and their use, which is deliberately left in their natural state in many areas, will create a patina over time that will give the house a distinctive character. A further major feature of the building is the specially manufactured room dividers, made of filigree steel profiles. Designed on the basis of THE GRID, they zone off spaces for different purposes in the rooms and shared living spaces.
We believe that the cast iron facade that forms the outer lateral layer of the ‚Wunderkiste‘ is both beautiful and innovative. A total of 2000 elements made of cast iron, as heavy as 70 elephants, show an abstract picture on the façade. Material and formal language reference the overall design and combine the genius loci of Frankfurt’s former industrial eastern district with the present day. The façade panels serve as a good example of the co-creation of many parts of the building. Studio ABERJA worked together with PIXELGARTEN as graphic designers and EXITECTURE architects on the design and implementation of the elements. We see the building as visual attraction beneficial for the reviailzation of the area and as a place giving home to a LINDENBERG guest community. The LINDENBERG group has always followed the so-called ‘conscious business’ approach. All LINDENBERG hotels are purely vegetarian establishments and mainly use home-grown products – fruits, vegetables, herbs eggs and honey – from LINDENBERG’s own BRAUMANNSWIESEN permaculture plot in the Taunus. The indoor farm at LINDLEY LINDENBERG makes international herbs accessible without the need to import them. Employees and guests are encouraged to work and live in the spaces in a resource-efficient way. Many of the fabrics (pillowcases, bags, slippers etc.) are produced in Sierra Leone by former ‘Sowies’ (female circumcisers), who were given the opportunity to stop engaging in the practice and instead work as seamstresses for LINDENBERG, among other companies.