Borderless Culture™ Life & Style: Boutique Hotel Design goes Egalitarian

3.21.2010

Boutique Hotel Design goes Egalitarian

I almost fell off my bed yesterday, when last night, I was flipping through March's issue of Travel and Leisure magazine and came upon their winners for the 2010 Design Awards. The article itself is not what surprised me. Many of their winners like the Santiago Calatrava's train station in Liege, the renovation and restoration of La Mamounia in Marrakesh, the Mondrian's Spa Miami's South Beach or the design of the Nomiya Restaurant in Paris (see left) seemed like obvious choices. What threw me was the winner of design for the best large hotel...are you ready?...extended drum roll...

MOTEL 6!

I know! I was floored too! So I had to do some digging this morning.

Motel 6, the 1960's American icon under the direction of European hotel company Accor is getting a major makeover known as the "Phoenix" prototype (as in the bird that symbolizes rebirth and renewal). The London design firm Priestmangoode is responsible for the hip, bright, utility driven new look. Instead of dated carpeting and furniture and old dizzying bedspreads there is now faux-wood floors (made from un-used industry scraps - very environmentally friendly), sleek furniture, 32 inch flat screen televisions and multi-media panels for ipods and laptops. The bathrooms have granite counters and round bowl-like sinks. While I have stayed in other boutique-like budget priced hotels in Europe - I haven't come across such a thing in the U.S.

After remodel

While the price today isn't quite the $6 it was when it first opened in Santa Barbara, it is by comparison still very reasonable. Just goes to show that good design doesn't have to be expansive or exclusive to the wealthy. It used to be when I went on road trips - I would drive right by a Motel 6 when looking for a place to stay. But now while they are slowly roll out this make-over, my curiosity is going to purposefully bring me to a city that has a newly redone Motel 6. As an architect and a travel junkie, this I have to check out. Road trip anyone?

For those who never stayed in a Model 6 before the remodel
- this is what it looked like.
Say Bye-Bye to depressing.

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If you're happy and you know it....

So it seems that researchers from Harvard Medical School (Nicholas Christakis) and UC San Diego (James Fowler) after studying close to 40 years of data concluded that when an individual becomes happier, there is a strong likelihood that a friend living within a mile experiences 25% increased chance of happiness. A spouse has an 8% chance to be more happy and a sibling who lives within one mile a 14% chance; and your next door neighbor 34% chance of greater happiness. There are however, a time and geographical constraints. The effect of someone else's happiness on your mood last less than a year. And of course the closer your happy friends are, the more likely you will reap the benefits of increased happiness levels.

Interestingly enough, unhappiness and sadness does not spread the same way.

Reliving the Best Part of my Childhood in Japan through Grilled Food

Since leaving Tokyo 20 years ago, there were foods I relished as a child that I thought I would never find again despite desperate attempts to do so. It wasn't that the food was so gourmet, in fact it was quite pedestrian. The grilled chicken or beef on a stick could all be bought at a tiny stall not far from our apartment in Tokyo. There were no room for seats. Our food came in crisp white paper bags and we would eat the warm flavorful pieces of meat while walking back home. Then there was the time we were on Mt. Fuji, freezing, surrounded by snow and the warm salty smokey smell of grilled corn wafted into our nostrils. I had never eaten corn so sweet yet savory. Since moving to North America, I have searched and searched but the flavors were just never quite right. They just weren't the same - until tonight. Nanbankan is hands down the best yakitori restaurant I have gone to outside Japan. And when I sank my teeth into that charcoal grilled chicken and that grilled corn I was eleven again.