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HOTEL REVIEW


Rabih Hage has created theatrical public areas inspired by the town’s most famous writer to complement Aukett Fitzroy Robinson’s tailored guestrooms for the £60m Radisson Edwardian Guildford.


Radisson Edwardian Guildford


Words: Catherine Martin Photography: Marcus Peel


plush red velvet are parted to reveal oversized props. Well-trodden boards lay underfoot illuminated by high-beam industrial spotlights. And waiting in the wings, a competent crew are ready for their cast to check-in. “I was keen to create an experience that will be enriched by the hotel’s guests, who will by the very nature of their visit, become performing artists in a creative, theatrical environment,” set designer Rabih Hage says of his masterpiece. The 183-key property, built on the site of a former 17th century coaching inn, is Guildford’s first four-star deluxe hotel. A joint venture between Marcol and Nicholas James Group, along with operator Radisson Edwardian, the hotel forms a major part of the regeneration of the town’s upper high street and brings some much-needed facilities in


A


rriving at Radisson Edwardian’s new town centre property is like stepping on stage into a theatrical production. Heavy drapes in


the form of bars, restaurants, a spa, and seven private function rooms. Retaining the period façade, the addition


of a triple-height glass atrium brings the building in line with the adjacent G Live entertainment complex that opened in September 2011, a draw that it is hoped will provide the hotel with a proportion of its leisure guests. Public spaces including the lobby, MKB and Relish, have been created by Rabih Hage, best known in the hospitality industry for his transformation of a rundown B&B in London into Rough Luxe, a nine-bed property that blends partially sanded surfaces, bare floorboards, chipped paint and rough edges with opulent contemporary wallpaper, modern art and designer furnishings. Although Radisson Edwardian Guildford is far more polished, Hage’s passion for interiors with character shines through. Photographer Massimo Listri’s prints of Italian palazzos also feature throughout.


The design brief was to create something


unique, where guests “discover something new every time they come” explains Hage, who strongly believes in creating a narrative. “In essence what I came up with for this project is a design concept which works in four dimensions – three of space, and the fourth is the way one circulates within; for me a hotel is a theatre of many lives, marking people and creating encounters,” he continues. “It is like a role in a play, the guests are the actors on the stage that we have created in the hotel.” Taking the theme of performance, Hage looked to Guildford’s most famous writer Lewis Carroll for inspiration. In the lobby, the set features a two-storey library kiosk that gives the impression of a private box from which to view the stage, and a three-metre chandelier as the centerpiece. Downstage, a towering bookcase accessed by the ‘ladder to nowhere’ acknowledges Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books.


WWW.SLEEPERMAGAZINE.COM JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2012 061


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