HOTEL REVIEW


Three local agencies, each of them new to hospitality design, in combination with DP Architects are the creative brains behind Loh Lik Peng’s experimental boutique venture in Little India.


Wanderlust Singapore


Words: Neena Dhillon Photography: © Rory Daniel


says entrepreneur Loh Lik Peng during a chat with Sleeper about the recent opening of Wanderlust, his third boutique hotel in Singapore and fifth worldwide. This unconventional approach is likely to have been inspired in part by the property’s bustling surroundings of Little India, an ethnic enclave of the city traditionally associated with budget hotels. “From a street life and streetscape point of view, I’ve wanted to do something here for years,” he continues. “The area has been crying out for a place with a sense of adventure.”


“C


While up to his elbows in the conversion of London’s Bethnal Green Town Hall into a hotel, Peng was notified of the availability of a conservation building back in Little India, originally constructed in the 1920s as a school


ohesive design was never a concern because I wanted something a bit chaotic, a bit fun,”


before becoming home to a Buddhist lodge. He acquired the heritage site in 2008. In line with the restoration nature of his other developments, it was the vintage character of the four-storey vernacular structure that appealed and to meet the city’s planning regulations, the original façade has been maintained, complete with quirky tiling. It is within the interiors, however, that


Peng has facilitated a collaboration of creative minds in an eclectic scheme that comprises floors of distinct character, with each of the 29 guestrooms varying to some degree. “We talked to many designers before settling on four agencies that were invited to choose the floor configuration they wanted to work on,” he explains. “Aside from fitting within my concept of Wanderlust being an adult playground, the agencies were free to come up with their own ideas.” Young creative firms with no experience of hotel design were sought out with the exception of DP


078 JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2011 WWW.SLEEPERMAGAZINE.COM


Architects, which has fulfilled an architectural and planning role, as well as designed its own guestroom floor. At ground level, it is the ‘Industrial Glam’ theme dreamed up by Chris Lee and Cara Ang of Asylum that greets visitors. Having explored the neighbouring streets around Dickson Road where “a crazy mix of shops and warehouses comprises hardware stores, provision shops selling spices, coffee shops with neon signs, collectors of used metal and second-hand computer stores,” Lee and Ang decided they wanted to bring some of these industrial elements to their design, albeit with a twist. In an open-plan space where the hotel lobby leads to a central bar and the French restaurant Cocotte, exposed concrete, brickwork and piping in addition to an industrial palette of grey and brown set the scene for furniture that has been created or chosen as conversation pieces. By reception this includes a wall montage consisting


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