Propeller Island City Lodge

Class: Budget

Style: Arts

Rooms: 32

At this point a lot of the novel thrill of the design hotel has worn off — overexposure has a way of making even the most avant-garde of designer interiors feel a bit safe. Then again it’s always possible to go a bit further out there, proof of which comes in the form of the Propeller Island City Lodge. It’s in Berlin — really, where else? — in a converted apartment building off the Kurfürstendamm, sharing space with the Propeller Island art gallery, though it’s hard to say exactly where one ends and the other begins. The rooms are more like installations than hotel rooms, except that each one (luckily) happens to have a bed in it and a lock on the door. Aside from that, just about everything is variable — some are overwhelmingly graphic, others almost parodically minimalist, and still others feel a bit like some kind of psychology experiment, like the upside-down room, where a set of furniture sits fastened to the ceiling and guests sleep in compartments beneath the floorboards. Coffins for beds, potato sacks for pillows — anything goes. Clearly this is not a hotel for old-guard traditionalists. Nor are traditionalists likely to grasp the service concept: reception is open only in the mornings, and later check-ins must be precisely scheduled and coordinated by cell phone. But tradition, at Propeller Island, is clearly beside the point; here you’ll see things you’ve never seen in a hotel before, which is something that is more and more difficult to say every year.