Following our recent successful renovations to The Park New Delhi and The Park Bangalore, Conran & Partners were commissioned to revive the original and first hotel, situated on the busy main thoroughfare of Park Street, Kolkata. The 150 bedroom hotel, which gave The Park Hotels (Park Hotel Group) their name, opened in 1967, the same year that the Beatles came to India to learn transcendental meditation. Our designs are consciously influenced therefore by meditation and Indian psychedelia. Hindu meditation links its seven bodily chakras to the seven colours of the spectrum. Against a dramatic background of black and white, these colours inform the new scheme.

Announcing the hotel’s lively bar and restaurant at street level, the striking Park Street façade will be clad in dichroic glass panels, which by day reflect the colours of the spectrum and by night will be lit internally. Dichroic glass is again used in the lobby in a bold diagonal partition wall, separating the lounge from the reception and incorporating an aquarium of iridescent tropical fish. Experiments in light and colour can also be found in the lounge with its illuminated white glass floor and flowing sculptural ceiling made from clear Perspex rods of varying lengths. Upstairs the monochromatic corridors will lead to colourful bedrooms, each room taking its accents from shades of one colour of the spectrum.

The ground floor and external treatment are due for completion by the end of 2007. Work on the upper floors will commence in 2008.