In Mexico City, a Serene Boutique Hotel With Art Deco Flair

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HOTEL SAN FERNANDO

Location: Mexico City

Designer: Bunkhouse and Reurbano

On Offer: Nestled into La Condesa, a 1947 apartment building is now reborn as Hotel San Fernando, the Austin hospitality group’s latest Bunkhouse hotel. Its 19 rooms range from cozy Sencillas with king beds and kitchens to Ocio suites with two sleeping areas and a trio of penthouse Terraza suites with private balconies. “Architecturally,” says executive chairman Amar Lalvani, the building “draws from the anti-traditional elegance of the Art Deco era. Simple volumes and ornamental elements reflect an admiration for the industrial.” 

And the decorative: the lobby’s existing stained-glass windows offered inspiration for the curvy breezeblock that forms the walls of the rooftop patios. “The building was filled with great details that we have preserved and celebrated,” Lalvani says, even down to the façade’s engraved name of the patron saint of engineering, for whom the building was originally named and from whom the hotel takes its moniker. 

Standout Features: Casement windows and encaustic tile floors maintain the building’s legacy, while new lighting collaborations with local ceramist Anfora and Oaxaca’s Oaxifornia build on it. La Metropolitana custom-made all the guest room furniture, along with some for the lobby—which features bathrooms clad in an eye-popping Cerámica San Pedro arrangement of five colors of tile, and an oblong open spiral stairwell rising to the fifth-floor terrace where guests can breakfast on fruit and Pan Dulces. Rose lacquer arches guide guests and the public alike to a ground-floor lobby, with its clay bar topped in marble and selections of natural wines and charcuterie. “It’s simple in the best way,” Lalvani says, “meaning everything you need but no more.”

(Photography by Chad Wadsworth.)