Inaugurated during the Salone del Mobile in Milan, Hotel Straf is designed to be more like an installation in which the focus is on materials, selected and combined to create an 'unfinished' feel in a setting where, in actual fact, even the tiniest detail has been studied with great care.
This includes the architectural elements in the rooms with "well-being corners", where technological details are set aside to give way to a rarefied dimension surrounded by glass walls.The same concept is used in the bar, where we find such elementary materials as cement walls and floors.
Here De Cotiis overwrites space with hyperdecoration. The perimeter of the bar is almost entirely hidden by objects, mostly recycled items such as the specially shaped panels of recycled fibreglass with hundreds of magnifying lenses corroded by time; in other cases the objects were created specifically for the project, such as the silkscreened images like wrecks dug up and casually left behind.
The green fibreglass light fixture from the '70s, the patchwork leather sofa and the stools also have a used feel, adding a strong touch of character. The result is an atmosphere that is artistic yet simple, where the mundane mixes and co-exists with the futuristic.
Laura Della Badia
www.straf.it
