Hip Digs in Vancouver

By Brian Libby, Northwest Palate
- January/February, 2003

In the past few years, the term “boutique hotel” has become familiar not just to hospitality insiders but also to travelers looking for lodgings with a cutting-edge design sensibility. The clean-lined and multi-hued modern interiors of hotels like the Sanderson in London and the Hudson in New York have made the stately old standbys seem bland and stodgy. Now Vancouver, B.C. boasts two establishments whose chic accoutrements and bold attitude appeal to sensation-seeking, service-savvy patrons...

...And speaking of different, the new Opus Hotel in Yaletown bids to become the most distinctive lodging in Vancouver. In designing its 97 rooms, Susan Smallenberg of Vancouver's Architectura set about creating five ‘muses’ - fictitious characters, each with different styles, who might book rooms at Opus. “We wanted each of the rooms to have a personality,” Smallenberg explains. “We started out by saying, ‘What would a Marilyn Monroe room look like? What would an Elizabeth Taylor room look like?’ And then we set more realistic goals and started to think of the personalities of the people who might want to stay in this hotel. So we developed the individual characters to help us think through the designs.”

One style of room is modeled after the fictional “Dede”, who, in the words of Opus Hotel manager David Curell, “is a Method actor who's pure Hollywood, glamorous and out-there.” Dede's room is festooned with faux-fur fabrics and dramatic furnishings. The décor for “Mike, a strikingly handsome doctor form New York,” is “modern and minimalist, yet seductively comfortable.” Bold red hues make his suite “the Architectural Digest of hotel rooms.” Toronto fashion analyst “Susan” is “sensible and sexy.” Her crisply tailored room is “chic and contemporary, ideal for the executive traveler.” Lodgings for London filmmaker “Billy” are “retro-contemporary, with vibrant colors and eclectic furnishings.” Curell likens this room to an artist's retreat. Finally, San Francisco-based dot com mavens “Bob & Carol” are the manager says, “more traditional and a tad conservative.” Their room is designed to be “eclectic and cozy, with earth tones and splashes of gold.”

If that sounds like a lot of décor packages, it is - most hotels apply just one or two basic design concepts to all their rooms. The project's sheer scale and attitude are enough to overshadow the silliness of the fictitious-characters concept. Yet one of Opus Hotel's boldest room features is purely architectural.

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