Le Méridien Transforms Its Lobbies to Offer a Gathering Place for Creative Minds that Promotes Dialogue, Awakens Curiosity and Stimulates Thinking.

Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts today introduced its lobby concept, “Le Méridien Hub,” which re-interprets the hotel brand’s lobbies as social gathering places for creative people to converse, debate and exchange. The Hub concept further builds on Le Méridien brand’s award-winning Arrival experience and coffee culture, which have both been implemented successfully worldwide. The Hub offers both guests and locals a creative atmosphere where contemporary, curated artwork sets the environment. Members of LM100, a group of cultural innovators of mixed generations and interdisciplinary artistic fields, identified by Le Méridien Cultural Curator Jerome Sans, have contributed their creativity to enhance the Hub experience.

“Starwood has long been an innovator in the transformation of the traditional hotel lobby,” said Eva Ziegler, Global Brand Leader, Le Méridien and W Hotels Worldwide. “More than 12 years ago when Starwood launched the W brand, our lobbies became Living Rooms, and soon after, Sheraton brought people together with the Link@Sheraton. Most recently, the Aloft brand’s lobbies have been designed to draw people out of their rooms through open floor plans and modular, flexible seating. Today, we are proud to reveal Le Méridien brand’s Hub concept, which will further evolve our new brand direction, designed to appeal to the creative class.”

Le Meridien Barcelona is the first hotel to fully execute the Hub experience, while other Hubs will launch throughout the year in Le Méridien hotels globally. Designed to promote dialogue, awaken curiosity and stimulate thinking, the Hub can be divided into three experience zones:

Arrival Experience:
Proprietary customer research shows that the first ten minutes of arrival define the guests’ entire experience and establishes their mindset. Beginning with the hotel entryway, high impact arrival art immerses guests into the world of Le Méridien. This transformation can be accomplished through a visual work of art, a projection or a unique soundscape – all created by Le Meridien LM100 members. This experience starts the moment the guest arrives at Le Méridien hotel, steps out of the car, steps inside the hotel, checks-in or asks for advice at the concierge.

Interaction Zone:
From communal seating to coffeehouse style seating this zone features unique styling of our hotel lobbies to stimulate dialogue, contemplation and interaction. Also in the lounge, guests will find a curated library of books with topics reflecting the cultural aspects of each Le Méridien location. Le Méridien brand’s signature “A New Perspective” event series, created to engage guests, local opinion leaders, media and associates into conversations around “culture,” will also take place in this space.

Latitude Bar:
Latitude Bar, with the quintessential espresso machine, supports the creative atmosphere of the Hub by drawing guests to the sights, sounds, and smells of the coffee bar, with a skilled barista crafting signature coffees. Guests can enjoy local culinary offerings and experiences inspired by a coffeehouse environment by day and a wine-inspired setting by night.

At its 1972 opening the star of Paris, Le Meridien Paris-Etoile returns to its seventies airlines glamour.

In 1972 Air France created Le Meridien Hotels to provide its customers with “a home away from home” in every corner of the world. Well at least, every French speaking corner of the world. In those days Paris was still the capital of the world for many and thus it was no surprise that Le Meridien opened its flagship property here. Visions of the future were great, people where flying on Jumbo 747′s, so the Le Meridien Paris-Etoile with its 1025 airliner styled bedrooms (read: small) was the embodiment of that vision. Until today Le Meridien-Paris Etoile remains Paris largest hotel. The 33-floor Concorde La Fayette Hotel of 1974 origins across the street ‘only’ has 950 rooms. Both hotels cater to the Paris Congress Centre at Porte Maillot.

The seventies went out of style and so did the Le Meridien flagship hotel. In the early 1990′s Le Meridien no longer was a core business for Air France and it was sold to UK hotel giant Forte, which was taken over by Granada, which merged, de-merged, split-up and sold once again before finally getting acquired by Lehman Brothers and Starwood Hotels. Now Le Meridien is one of the Starwood brands, like Sheraton, Westin and lifestyle brands W Hotels and Aloft. Le Meridien’s European image fits the bill for the design and art savvy properties of Le Meridien.

So finally Le Meridien’s “grande dame” will get its former 70′s glamour back. With designs by Jean-Philippe Nuel, designer of many hotels on stylehotelsweb Le Meridien Paris-Etoile will take back its first class’ 747 position. The Le Meridien is gradually being renovated floor-by-floor. For now make sure to book one of the ‘executive’ rooms which boasts the Nuel design. Still small in size, but hey, this is Paris.

Philadelphia’s lineup of hotels is prosaic; a grande dame here, a business hotel there, a family-friendly one over there. But its recently received a jolt with the addition of two fresh boutique properties, last year’s Hotel Palomar, from Kimpton, and this May’s Le Meridien.

Like the Loews PSFS before them, both hotels are fine examples of adaptive reuse — they’ve brought new vitality to what were previously run-down, half-filled office buildings.

The ways in which each has achieved that are quite different, and they provide eye-opening lessons about the points where contemporary design and architectural preservation intersect.

Located in the old Architect’s Building at 17th and Sansom, built in 1929, the Palomar was particularly challenged by the mixture since it faced one more mandate: to hone to strict sustainability constraints as the chain sought to obtain its first LEED gold certification.

For L.A.-based interior designer Dayna Lee, that meant finding ways to make the limited patterns and colors currently offered by green fabric makers more visually interesting. Lee says that using an artistic grab bag of seamstress tricks like “decorative stitching, rusching, ruffling, and piercing” helped her enliven the hotel’s window treatments, dress pillows, and rugs.

A few blocks away at 15th and Arch, Le Meridien faced its own obstacles: a 1911 building designed by Horace Trumbauer (he of the Union League, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other Philly institutions) with a meandering layout — the result of several expansions — and a patchwork assemblage of hanging-in-there tenants.

“It was a very complicated renovation,” says John Hayes, Jr., a principal at local historic restoration specialist Blackney Hayes. “We joked that there were 202 rooms — and 202 room types. Many of the existing conditions were not observable until after the demolition, so getting all of these disparate elements to form one cohesive project was quite challenging.”

Chief among the problems: an interior lightwell that in the 1970s was turned into a skylit atrium, featuring steel balconies that delighted the renovation architects with their retro hipness. Now, elevators let out onto the balconies, which overhang the atrium. An oblong hole in the middle of each floor remains, surrounded by exterior brickwork. A problematic design feature, yes, but one that offers drama and surprise to visitors.

Erected as a showcase intellectual center for the YMCA — the upper floors of the 8-story building once contained dormitories — the building eventually served as headquarters for the District Attorney’s office. Indeed, one of the hotel’s showstoppers is the Y’s old study hall, which later served as the personal office of the D.A.

It’s easy to imagine the rank and file ADAs slaving over their computers and legal pads, while folks like Ed Rendell, Ron Castille, and Lynne Abraham lorded it up in this richly-panelled room. Watched over by the great names of Homer and Goethe inscribed near the ceiling, they could easily cast longing glances at the tower of City Hall looming just outside the windows.

The Palomar, though pretty much gutted, also has enough of the good stuff left to intrigue architecture aficionados. It too offers a (much smaller) library — a refined, sunlit room that features a black marble fireplace, crown molding, coffered ceilings, and pocket doors. Its simplicity and symmetry say Philadelphia Federal not Art Deco, the period in which the building was erected.

Architects also preserved the building’s ornate second-floor elevator lobby, which isn’t Deco, Federal or any other one thing. Instead, Lee speculates, this mashup of Moorish and Mediterranean tilework may have been used as a way for resident architects to showcase their diverse talents and styles.

In her own nod to the building’s roots as the place where architects came to roost, Lee has added artwork that’s about, she says, “study and process.” Several complex paper constructions incorporate art history textbooks and even the Palomar’s blueprints. At the entry to the hotel, Lee’s placed her own work, a sort of pop-up book that references architectural tomes.

Le Meridien, too, looks to original art to add pizazz to its already jazzy red, black and white interiors. In the dining room, for example, a mirrored work pays homage to Philly’s “LOVE” sculpture by repeating the word over and over in smudgy, lipstick-red paint.

In both hotels, the lobbies are the stars. The Palomar opts for cozy yet whimsical modernity, with neon-hued busts of Ben Franklin, curving sofas, and a great fireplace of sculpted white lacquer that’s as slinkily Art Deco as a Jean Harlow bias gown.

Le Meridien takes its amazing dark panelling  — much of it original, and some of it cleverly reconstructed — as a jumping off point, peppering the spaces with clean, linear white furniture that contrasts dramatically with, while never stealing any thunder from, the building’s bones.

Each property clearly understands the role of its contemporary interventions. “The criteria of the historical consultants was that any surface material we applied should contrast with the existing ones,” Lee says, “so the two are never confused.”

Hayes echoes that sentiment. “The design concept was to respect the historic character with new elements touching the building in the lightest, most graceful way,” he says. “None of the old stuff is actually engaged by any of the new — the bar backs and communal tables, the dropped ceilings, the lighting, even the exterior glass canopy — all appear to float away from the original marble, wood, and plaster surfaces.”

Squeaking in under the wire before the recession put other projects on hold, these two hotels complement each other and enhance the Philadelphia design scene. At last, we’ve been gifted with the “hip” hotel factor that much smaller cities have already embraced for a decade. And, we can all enjoy the fruits of complex renovations that have returned the luster to two long-neglected, much-beloved structures.