New Hotel by the Campana brothers

A years-long project of mammoth architectural restoration, New Hotel by the Campanas opens in June.

Watch the video interview with Fernando Campana

The Greek magnate Dakis Joannou never ceases to surprise. A diligent collector and visionary businessman, he has been the intrepid drive behind 360° culture via operations ranging from the hospitality industry to contemporary art and design. Besides having founded the Deste Foundation, a space devoted to international contemporary art (with illustrious collaborators such as Massimiliano Gioni and Jeffrey Deitch), Mr. Joannou is a focused and demanding lover of radical design who follows strict rules (collect the best work produced between the late 1960s and the early 1970s) and an avid collector with a measureless—in terms of quality first and then number—collection of contemporary art works that includes giants (and at giant scale) such as Jeff Koons, Urs Fischer and Roberto Cuoghi. A couple of years ago, Koons also put his name to the famous 35-metre yacht called Guilty that replaced the first vessel named Protect Me From What I Want, after a work by US artist Jenny Holzer.

Another commendable focus of Mr Joannou's interests is the Yes! Hotel (as in, Young, Enthusiastic and Seductive Hotels!) chain, which comprises the psychedelic and fluorescent Semiramis Hotel by Karim Rashid, the designer's first hotel; the Twentyone Hotel, with rooms personalised by young artists; the Periscope with its light-box views of Athens in every room and sophisticated P-Box restaurant, serving Greek tapas by chef Christopher Peskias; the elegant Kefalares Suites and the more corporate-style Intercontinental. Unlike other chains which are usually standardised worldwide, this one is based on differentiation and an unfailing presence of art in every hotel.
Now, Joannou has a new project—in name and deed—the New Hotel, situated in the heart of Athens, a stone's throw from Syntagma Square and Plaka. It was designed by the eclectic Brazilian designer-duo Humberto and Fernando Campana, who, for the first time, found themselves addressing a colossal architectural refurbishment project that lasted for years. New Hotel originated as the phoenix rising from the ashes of the Olympic Palace Hotel and, although totally reconceived as is the Brazilians' way, it maintains some of its most significant features, such as the black marble staircase and its typical 1940s solid-wood balustrade. The process was, however, more complex and structured than a simple refurbishment. Given their love of restoring, recycling and sharing, the Campana brothers decided to bring in a group of 20 young architects from the Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly to design the plates, glasses, side lamps, coffee-tables and seating for the hotel. Old Louis IV chair frames were covered with soft caramel coloured leather and fake Thonet chairs were painted canary yellow, all studied and executed by hand during classes.
"This workshop and these splendid students produced outstanding ideas on how to reinvent the past and make it modern", says Fernando Campana, adding "we came to Athens regularly every two months for over a year to monitor the students' work and see the results of the experiments, which I must say were hugely satisfying. It was a fantastic interdisciplinary process filled with surprises, as is always the case when you work with enthusiastic young people. This workshop really boosted the innovation and creativity, and it was interesting to see how our language was successfully translated into a number of interpretations."
New Hotel is like a play on words, stemming from old pieces and new concepts suited to local tradition.
New Hotel is like a play on words, stemming from old pieces and new concepts suited to local tradition. The imposing columns in the reception lobby were covered with the long, narrow strips of wood (already familiar to us) used in the famous Favela Chair; larger in size, they seem to sprout from the ground to become majestic recycled trees resembling the African baobab. Talking of Africa, some of the cladding in the long corridors is Bark Cloth, a natural wallpaper produced by processing bark from the Moraceae tree family; that used in the New Hotel comes from Uganda. The theme of fragments dear to the Campana brothers' hearts also reappears in the large slabs of marble on the floor by the reception. The Campana brothers are past masters at disconcerting contrasts and the marbles, symbols of a past status, lose their luxurious allure and contrast sharply with the grey aluminium walls of the gym, sauna and Turkish bath and the zigzagged contours of the meeting room. The joiners have worked well and desks in the rooms are geometrically crooked as only Fernando and Humberto could imagine; similarly, the copper-coloured washbasins adopt an undulating and fragmented design produced by painstaking chiselling that contrasts with the chrome of the Olympic and the gold effect that is repeated obsessively in all the tapware. How many materials did you use? "You name it, we used it, so long as it was natural", says Fernando Campana.
The Brazil-Greece combination is significant and fascinating, especially in that Brazil is interpreting Greece. The Campana brothers spent a great deal of time in the Greek capital, entering into contact with local tradition. New Hotel is primarily a Greek hotel as seen by Brazilian designers. Furnishings in its 79 rooms were designed by the Campana brothers and the collectables in the public areas were purchased personally by the Campana brothers in the city's popular flea markets. All the rooms enjoy the natural light that here, in south-eastern Europe, can leave you breathless. The hotel develops around three themes dear to local tradition and that are featured in the rooms spread over five floors: Karagiozis and friends, old shadow puppets always at odds with everyday occurrences such as having a tooth out at the dentist's, driving a cart to market, talking to fish and chasing dragons. Drawn from Turkish tradition, the figures are carved, covered with gold and mounted on the room walls like a moving fairytale.
The second theme is that of good and evil, in which the traditional form of the Evil Eye is revisited on a psychedelic note with rear-lit LEDs that form a starry sky on the walls opposite the large beds. Jelly sweets in the same shape on the bedside tables guard against bad luck. The third theme is a poetic set of macro-postcards, slightly retro and touristy ones depicting the history of Magna Graecia and sweeping views of the delightful Peloponnese and Dodecanese islands; this reiterates the now lost custom of sending travel souvenirs, today replaced by short emails and snapshots taken with mobile phones. The postcards, arranged haphazardly on the room walls, also symbolise the unstable progress being made by contemporary Greece, which is slowly lifting itself out of a financial crisis. Art could not, of course, be missing from this treasure chest and it too is by the Campana Brothers.
Dining will also be revolutionised by New Taste, a buffet restaurant serving good quality organic food that can be taken away by those with a flight to catch or planning a picnic in the ruins of the Acropolis. Athens. Greece. The cradle of civilisation and of modern-day life. Welcome to the New Hotel!
Maria Cristina Didero

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