Over the past two decades, JOI-Design has been one of Europe’s most prolific hotel interior design companies, working with international brands, such as Hilton, Le Meridien, Ritz-Carlton, Sheraton, Mercure and Park Inn, as well as with numerous independent hotels. Now, the company has completed the new Radisson Blu at Hamburg Airport – a hotel that is in so many ways “a first”.
The appointment in early 2007 to design Rezidor’s hotel at Hamburg Airport brought fresh opportunity for JOI-Design. Although the company had worked on several Park Inns, the sister brand to Radisson, this was its first Radisson, and it was to be a high profile, new-build hotel. The challenge was further heightened in that there was already a Radisson in Hamburg and clearly the airport hotel needed to be differentiated from this through its design. The final twist in the tale was that the architects had designed a circular double height volume to the base of the building topped by five three-quarter circles of bedroom floors, projecting over the base and wrapping inwards on one side to create the main entrance from the terminal. All the public spaces – reception, lounge, bar, spa, fine dining restaurant, breakfast area and workspace – were to be accommodated within the round, ground floor.
Two considerations governed JOI-Design’s response. On the one hand, it was impractical, if not impossible, to divide this space up with conventional solid walls. On the other hand, the tradition of numerous small rooms, each dedicated to a single activity, was beginning to be rejected as the way to design public areas in business class hotels. Instead, the notion of open, but zoned, spaces generating an interactive environment was being seen as more suited to modern, informal lifestyles. This fortunate confluence of the practical and the desirable became the starting point in JOI-Design’s concept, which celebrated, rather than obscured, the orb of the building form.
The designers were concerned to avoid the potential pitfall of creating a single central hub within a large, but under-utilised circular area. They therefore introduced a series of organic oval forms.These play across the strong and structured concrete space in its entirety like a layered series of discs that are harmoniously related but separate from one another. Inter-relating oval shapes are everywhere – in the form of the reception desks, the design of the bar and in the striking spiral staircase leading to the conference areas. They are painted boldly on the walls, reflected in the choice of furniture and repeated in the carpet design. In the heart of this dynamic space, a sphere accommodates the restaurant with two satellite spheres, bar and breakfast room, on facing sides.
Flooring is in “roasted” oak interspersed with areas of limestone slabs and carpet to define particular areas and their usage; timber panelling is combined with coloured and lit acrylic sheets and the imposing buffet bar is in black granite. A particularly intriguing stand out feature are the door surrounds to two large wine chillers. With their hundreds of inset wine bottle bases, back-lit to glow through the space, they are transformed into witty pieces of “glass-art” commissioned by JOI-Design from German glass sculptor, Sybille Homann.
Throughout the public areas, hard finishes are juxtaposed with soft, and fixed elements with floating, breaking down conventional barriers between work and leisure spaces and creating a sense of flexibility and mobility. These are two words dear to the heart of JOI-Design’s founder and managing director, Peter Joehnk.
“Flexibility and mobility are the two words that capture the spirit of today’s professional nomads,” he explains. “Hotels have become vital interfaces for modern knowledge workers, none more so than airport hotels. They are set to establish themselves as an opposite pole to the impersonal arenas in much of the global business world, such as airports themselves. The design of airport hotels should aim to fill a vacuum – as an off-line meeting place for on-line contacts perhaps, or as a refuge for quiet work, or as somewhere to replenish oneself after a tiring day.”
Lighting is key in the public areas of the Radisson Blu. The overall colour scheme is quiet, in 
tones of browns, greys and beiges with occasional highlights such as the cream leather seating in the restaurant. It is the lighting that brings the space alive and creates areas of special interest. Large cubes of ceiling lights project changing mood lighting over the restaurant, for example; custom designed freestanding lamps circle the bar like futuristic beacons defining the territory within and a mesh of intertwined and vividly lit threads creates an optical illusion, separating what is in reality an open buffet bar from the restaurant and lobby.
Shape, light and materials combine in an overall effect that is vivacious but not exhausting. This is a modern business hotel, appropriate for its busy airport location, but it is also offers a number of intimate, even cosy, areas where guests can work or dine, or simply unwind, at all times through the day. A Radisson Blu that is a first for Hamburg and for JOI-Design.