celandine designblog

spring grove - anke vera zink (germany)

Why visit a gallery when you could be sleeping in one?

The Fox Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark, has 61 rooms - each individually designed by one of the 21 international graphics design artists that collaborated on this combination of accommodation and art.

You can’t select a specific room to stay in (the logistical problems would be immense) but you can list a number of your favourites and the hotel will try to accommodate you if they can. There is also a wonderful ‘Tour de Fox’ offer, which lets you have a three-night stay in the hotel and sleep in a different room each night – again, at arrival you can ask if your favourites are available and if they are – you can have them!!

king's court 2 - birgit amadori (germany)

People are very different in their travel preferences – some insist on a luxurious stay and others don’t care where they lay their head, as long as they’re free to roam around the foreign city from morning to night. But if there is one thing that all hotel rooms share – be they silk and plush or threadbare linen and no heating – they all look painfully impersonal. Everything about a hotel room screams ‘you are only a visitor here. this space is sterilized for you, it will be sterilized for the next one that comes along. you are a number in a long faceless line.’ Some friends have told me they enjoy that impersonal, detached feeling hotel rooms provide – others say it makes them feel uneasy. I personally find hotel rooms ringing hollow somehow – I don’t dislike them, but I always wish there was….. There was something there.

japanese garden - tokidoki (italy)

…and, there I go!! There is definitely something here. Some of the rooms I find charming, some are utterly beautiful, some too minimalistic or too rich in tone or too maniacal for my taste - but each by each and all put together give a beautiful background to the idea of a trip to Copenhagen. And while most remarkable hotels in the world tend to come with remarkable prices attached, you can stay at Fox for about 60 euro per person, if you choose your timing well.

I have to confess I spent ages browsing through the site, enlarging the room images and trying to imagine what it would feel like to spend a night in each one…. To fall asleep and to wake up inside a painting. Nothing else has ever made me particularly wish to visit Copenhagen.

sleep well - geneviève gauckler (france)

Along a similar line of thought, you can always take lodging in Ljubljana, Slovenia in Celica - which is an old prison revamped into a youth hostel, with the first floor cells transformed into cute little rooms and – again – individually designed by young artists. Each still has its original cell door, avec bars and all, so if you ever wondered what it would be like to sleep in a prison cell…… Here’s a way to get only the positive side of that experience. Although the room design is not quite as visually lavish and snazzy as Fox, the idea is brilliant – and I quite fancy cell 107….. Be sure to look at the panoramic view – it gives a much better sense of space than the individual photographs.

The Fox hotel piqued my interest so much that I actually started shopping around for flights etc for a weekend in Copenhagen this spring/ autumn. If the nefarious visa regime doesn’t thwart my ingenious plans – I’m there. Can’t wait to wake up with the faeries.