Opening Shot is a column that peeks inside new hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops with interiors to drool over.
R48 Hotel
Location: Tel Aviv
Designers: Studio Liaigre, AN+, Piet Oudolf
On Offer: French elegance meets German restraint at the R48 Hotel and Garden, hospitality impresario Mati Broudo’s pristine new destination on the White City’s tony Rothschild Boulevard. Housed in a 1930s-era Bauhaus beauty thoughtfully resurrected under the watchful eye of the Israel Conservation Authority, the pristine new property is slated to fetch the highest room rate on the market. Local preservation specialists AN+ complimented the original structure’s rational curves with a glazed facade to encourage waves of seaside sunlight to stream inside the building and across High Line landscape designer Piet Oudolf’s serene Mediterranean gardens.
Each of the hotel’s 11 suites, completely unique from one another in both mood and furnishings, are luxurious without a hint of fussiness. “The interior architecture and layout of the different spaces go straight to the point,” says Studio Liaigre creative director Frauke Meyer, “transmitting a feeling of freshness and modernity.” Splashes of yellow and green warm up the otherwise neutral palette, while materials—travertine slabs, tulipwood, assamela, walnut, carpets of silk and bathrooms in granite—emphasize texture. Taste comes courtesy of a pair of dining options: Chef’s Table, Ohad Solomon’s Far East–via–Middle East restaurant in the heart of the hotel, and the all-day Brasserie 48, a Mediterranean cocktails-and-bites venture arriving later this spring.
Standout Features: Liaigre offers a suite of new custom furnishings throughout, including tables and suspensions. The “Solyme” bedhead, Meyer notes, “is a masterpiece made of solid wood with integrated bronze bedside tables and reading lights.” (Parisian Liaigre fans can preview the piece at its Faubourg Saint-Honoré flagship, on display in a blue-green iteration inspired by Tel Aviv itself.) A program of contemporary artwork by local talents Ori Gersht, Tai Shochat, and Anisa Ashkar offers even more memorable touches. But the real triumph is the building itself, whose wraparound balconies and curvilinear staircase prove the global timelessness of the International Style.
Photography by Mario Palmieri.
