Sanderson, London

The Sanderson hotel designed by Philippe Starck opened its doors in 1998 in London. 

“I dedicate the Sanderson to mental games, optical illusions, to eccentricities, to dreams, to successful impossibilities. When you arrive in the hotel, you do not really understand what is going on. Nothing is really in its place, nothing really has its true volume, its true size.

The sofas are "stretched", the countertops are television screens, the bar, much too long, is luminescent, there are gigantic marquetry cabinets with no drawers... When you take the elevator, you fall into outer space, they are completely covered with three-dimensional photos of space.

When you arrive into your room, there aren’t really any walls, you do not know what you see. The few existing separations, all of glass and veiling, are more or less luminescent. There is an effect of extraordinary freedom. Once in bed, you discover the only work of art is on the ceiling: a landscape, and while you fall asleep, you can wander the small path, pass between the two hills and be gone, just like that, far away.

With the Sanderson hotel, we are pushing the acceptable limits for a hotel: the beds are not perfectly in the middle, the bathrooms are not in a corner, and they are entirely in glass, all of this is very disturbing.

The Sanderson is an unprecedented exploration of the territories of daydreaming and avant-garde in the hotel industry.” 

Philippe Starck