Following our recent successful renovations to the Park Delhi hotel and the Park Bangalore, Conran & Partners were commissioned to revive the original and first Park Hotel, situated on the busy main thoroughfare of Park Street, Kolkata. The 150 bedroom hotel, which gave the 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 of this period. Hindu meditation links its seven bodily charkas 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 popular bar and nightclubs at street level, the striking new 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. Guests entering the hotel will drive past through a street café where plasma screens will flash up images representing each colour in the spectrum, starting with red on entry and changing through to violet on reaching the hotel. In the lobby, like a long Donald Judd sculpture, dichroic glass is again used in a bold diagonal partition wall, separating the lounge from the reception and leading guests to the lifts. The wall incorporates 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. Inside the lifts, LED panels will create a psychedelic light show for the journey up or down. A gallery within the hotel creates a contemporary ordered environment in which a colourful and inspiring collection of Chakra contemporary Indian influenced artworks are displayed.
Upstairs the monochromatic corridors will lead to colourful bedrooms, each room taking its accents from shades of one colour of the spectrum. The bathrooms, partially enclosed behind a curved black gloss lacquered partition, will be are finished in lustrous white glass mosaics.
We have also given the three restaurants in the hotel new identities. Zen, completed last year, is an Asian-fusion restaurant inspired by the overlapping petals of a lotus flower. Saffron restaurant is a conceptual interpretation of the Saffron spice within a jute/hessian “sack”, with various textures, materials and dramatic lighting used to express the spectrum of bright and rich colours of the Saffron spice. In the Terrace Restaurant, the outside and the inside flow into one space, with tropical planting and timber finishes.
A series of banquet rooms use soft sheer curtains, coloured lighting and projections of chakra inspired imagery to colour and change their ambience to suit the host’s requirements.
Announcing the hotel’s popular bar and nightclubs at street level, the striking new 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. Guests entering the hotel will drive past through a street café where plasma screens will flash up images representing each colour in the spectrum, starting with red on entry and changing through to violet on reaching the hotel. In the lobby, like a long Donald Judd sculpture, dichroic glass is again used in a bold diagonal partition wall, separating the lounge from the reception and leading guests to the lifts. The wall incorporates 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. Inside the lifts, LED panels will create a psychedelic light show for the journey up or down. A gallery within the hotel creates a contemporary ordered environment in which a colourful and inspiring collection of Chakra contemporary Indian influenced artworks are displayed.
Upstairs the monochromatic corridors will lead to colourful bedrooms, each room taking its accents from shades of one colour of the spectrum. The bathrooms, partially enclosed behind a curved black gloss lacquered partition, will be are finished in lustrous white glass mosaics.
We have also given the three restaurants in the hotel new identities. Zen, completed last year, is an Asian-fusion restaurant inspired by the overlapping petals of a lotus flower. Saffron restaurant is a conceptual interpretation of the Saffron spice within a jute/hessian “sack”, with various textures, materials and dramatic lighting used to express the spectrum of bright and rich colours of the Saffron spice. In the Terrace Restaurant, the outside and the inside flow into one space, with tropical planting and timber finishes.
A series of banquet rooms use soft sheer curtains, coloured lighting and projections of chakra inspired imagery to colour and change their ambience to suit the host’s requirements.
