Paris Style Video: Karl Lagerfeld Crystal for Orrefors

 

Irwin Weiner ASID - Greetings from Paris! Jay Johnson and I are in the beautiful French capital on vacation, and that of course means that we're on "assignment" for Design2Share. We never go anywhere without reporting back on residential and home trends, and that includes the latest international hotel scene and other looks in public spaces that will soon influence the shape of home style. While we're gone this week, we thought it would be fun to focus on different elements of French style in select videos. First is Paris-based fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld showing off his crystal designs for Orrefors.

Go to the Karl website for more information about Karl's world of design. We definitely checked out his recommendation of favorite Places and hope to check out several, e.g., La Societe restaurant and shops like Sennelier and Colette. 

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Style Details Video from Hotel Le Bristol Paris

Irwin Weiner ASID - Interior design is all about spaces with good architectural bones and exquisite details to make the space comfortable and provide a pleasing human scale for everyday living. The best hotels in the world are quite adept at providing style by the bushel, but sometimes the effect is mass-produced and sterile.

I found this lifestyle marketing video for Hôtel Le Bristol in Paris, and it exemplifies the best of hotel style. Thoughtful, personable, comfortable, luxurious, beautiful interior spaces - and sometimes quirky, like the room we see with pitched angles, like in a converted attic - this is what I look for in a fine hotel.

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Hotel Week on Design2Share - Let's Visit the Shangri-La in Paris

Irwin Weiner ASID - It's our unofficial "Summer Vacation - Explore International Hotels" Week on Design2Share, and today's featured video focuses on the amazing and lovingly redesigned Shangri-La Hotel in Paris. If you're looking for historical pedigree, this hotel has it in spades: it was the home of Napoleon's grandnephew, Prince Roland Bonaparte. The 1896 building is adjacent to the Trocadéro and has views to all our favorite Paris sites (the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides, Louvre, Montmartre, and the River Seine). The building was restored by architect Richard Martinet and Pierre-Yves Rochon did a masterful job of the interior design.

Bonus

Are you wondering what Paris has to offer the design-savvy traveler? Click here to watch a design video featuring the Paris Flea Markets.

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World's Wildest Hotel Concepts Ever!

Irwin Weiner ASID - I call wild architecture "that Dubai phenomenon." It seems that this Middle Eastern philosophy of More Is More is catching on, and there are some amazing, futuristic concepts afoot for new hotels on land, in the ocean, in outer space, and - attention, Newt Gingrich - on the moon. Today's featured video will show you some of these wild hotel concepts, including The Waterworld in China (see above), an imaginative vision for a new hotel in a former quarry. 

But not all wild hotel concepts involve Dubai-style excessive architecture. Some hotels have concepts that are imaginative without being over the top, like Das Park Hotel in Austria (see photos above), where you can stay in a hotel room made from concrete pipes. In a similar recycling bent, how about staying at the Capsule Hotel in The Hague (below), where your floating hotel room is inside a bright orange survival pod?

Or how about the Hotel Everland, a single-room luxury hotel suite that is completely mobile - it's moved around from city to city, sometimes winding up on a beautiful lakefront, and other times winding on the roof of a building overlooking the Eiffel Tower in Paris or perched atop a contemporary art gallery in Leipzig?

So now that your concept of real hotels has been exploded, it won't be too much of a stretch to watch the following video and imagine staying in an undersea or outer space hotel, right?

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