Yabu Pushelberg has designed major hotel and commercial properties throughout the world
Bruce Constantineau
Sun
interior designer Glenn Pushelberg, who is designing the new Ritz-Carlton, envisions a glamorous hotel with a subtle West Coast feel. Photograph by : Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun
Interior design firm Yabu Pushelberg created this display for the Lane Crawford luxury department store in Beijing.
Renowned Canadian interior design firm Yabu Pushelberg will design the upscale Ritz-Carlton hotel scheduled to open in Vancouver by 2011.
Snaring the company is considered a significant coup for the project, as the firm — with offices in Toronto and New York — has designed major hotel and commercial properties throughout the world.
Glenn Pushelberg, who co-founded the company with George Yabu in 1980, envisions a hotel that’s “sophisticated and a little bit glamorous” with a subtle West Coast feel.
“I think there’s a lot of plagiarism in the hotel world and things can get a bit trite,” he said in an interview Friday. “Not that it’s bad but I’ve told (our team) don’t make it look like the Vancouver airport because that’s too obvious.
“At the same time, there are materials and processes that are intrinsic to the place and feel comfortable but it should be less obvious.”
The 127-room Ritz-Carlton hotel will occupy the first 20 floors of a new 60-storey, Arthur Erickson-designed twisting tower at 1133 West Georgia. The $500-million-plus hotel-condo project is being developed by the Holborn Group, controlled by Vancouver entrepreneur Simon Lim.
Yabu Pushelberg’s project list is impressive. After designing the new Tiffany store on Wall Street and the W Hotel in Times Square, the company is working on six new hotel projects throughout New York.
It also designed the hyper-chic, 77-room Hazelton Hotel in Toronto — widely touted to become that city’s first-ever five-diamond-rated property.
“Toronto didn’t have any glamorous hotels so we gave them something glamorous,” Pushelberg said. “We saw the Hazelton as more European, with spaces that are smaller and more intimate.”
The Ritz-Carlton hotel is his company’s first Vancouver project since designing the Leone store in the 1980s. Pushelberg said he’s excited at the chance to work with Erickson, who touted Yabu Pushelberg’s abilities to the U.S. media after finding out the company designed the Leone outlet.
“We had never met him but he arranged this dinner in Toronto to introduce us to the American media,” he said. “So we have always wanted to do a project with Arthur, who is an incredibly talented architect.”
Pushelberg, 54, feels every hotel project needs its own “visual language” and thinks the Vancouver Ritz-Carlton tower’s iconic architecture will draw people from a distance.
“We think the hotel needs to kind of segue from something iconic to something emotional because hotel experiences are emotional experiences,” he said.
The unique Erickson twisting design of the building will throw more than a few curves at the Yabu Pushelberg team.
“It’s a design challenge because every room is different, which forces you to make many different layouts,” Pushelberg said. “From a guest point of view, it will be interesting because when you go back, you will always have a new experience.”
He said hotels are very much public social spaces now so he expects the Ritz-Carlton lobby will feature contrasts, a “point of view,” comfortable seating and a mix of beautiful art and unique architecture.
Pushelberg feels Ritz-Carlton is searching for the “new luxury” as it breaks out of its old “Americana” mold.
“There was a time in the 1980s when the guys that ran the show were designing for themselves,” he said. “But those guys are in their 70s now and its people in their 30s to 50s who are the customers and they’re looking for a new point of view in luxury.”
Though not a big fan of the term “world class,” Pushelberg feels Vancouver has a lot going for it now — incredible outdoor activities, a diverse population, a great urban fabric, a good stock of architecture and a West Coast point of view.
“There are a lot of strengths here and we want to contribute to that to make a lovely hotel for Vancouver,” he said.
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
