25hours Hotel The Circle Cologne

O&O Baukunst

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From an administrative building to a scenic designer hotel

With a record store and co-work­ing area, rooftop restau­rant and bar, toilets with a view over the city, plus trendy fur­nish­ings, from fur­ni­ture cubes to hanging bike mounts in the rooms – the hotels of the 25hours chain are always de­signer ex­pe­ri­ences with the cool factor. And yet, despite this shared char­ac­ter­is­tic, not one of the hotels re­sem­bles the other. This is because the cre­ators have spe­cialised in re­vi­tal­is­ing ex­ist­ing build­ings that have been for­got­ten and ne­glected and con­vert­ing them into hotels with special ar­chi­tec­tural fea­tures.

The 25hours hotel in Cologne is called The Circle due to the ex­trav­a­gant shape of the 1960s struc­ture, which was orig­i­nally built for the Gerling in­sur­ance company. It is a mon­u­men­tal eight-storey rotunda from which a quarter was cut out to let light come into the build­ing from the south.

A facade of broad hor­i­zon­tal panels and fine tri­an­gu­lar pillars adds struc­ture to the rotunda, while the two sides facing the front are com­pletely win­dow­less and are only broken up by the subtly dif­fer­ent lines of the natural stone slabs, punc­tu­ated by pro­ject­ing el­e­ments placed in strate­gic lo­ca­tions. It is a truly sculp­tural build­ing. Cologne’s Gerling Quarter is one of the most am­bi­tious urban de­vel­op­ment pro­jects of the post-war period and one of the largest his­toric build­ings in Germany of this era. The sale of the quarter in 2006 ushered in a mon­u­men­tal eco­nomic boom for the city. The Circle hotel, which opened in 2018 in the former ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing, is the crown­ing com­ple­tion of this trans­for­ma­tion. One of the great­est chal­lenges for the ar­chi­tects of O&O Baukunst, who were com­mis­sioned to do the project on the listed build­ing, was to restore the natural stone facade, with its stark relief, in a way in which their in­ter­ven­tion would not be seen.

The core ren­o­va­tion left only the bare-bones struc­ture of the orig­i­nal build­ing. ‘For two years we worked with the Mon­u­ment Au­thor­ity and spe­cial­ist con­trac­tors for tech­ni­cal fire pro­tec­tion, struc­tural en­gi­neer­ing and heat in­su­la­tion to create a so­lu­tion that matched the geom­e­try of the old build­ing by 99%,’ Chris­t­ian Heuchel ex­plains.

Architect and object

Photo: © Schnep­pRe­nou Berlin

‘Every new build has to deal with the old these days. Every ar­chi­tect should proac­tively exploit the op­por­tu­nity to slip into past layers of time, revive prob­lems and so­lu­tions from the past and self­lessly con­tinue to build on them,’ says Chris­t­ian Heuchel, Man­ag­ing Partner at O&O Baukunst Cologne, which was re­spon­si­ble for re­vi­tal­is­ing the build­ing.

Dealing with the old

The old counter hall, where cus­tomers once paid in their money, is also pro­tected as part of the listed build­ing. This did not get in the way of the sen­sa­tional design – quite the op­po­site. The in­te­rior de­sign­ers trans­formed the room, with its cir­cu­lar re­cep­tion counter and opulent cir­cu­lar ribbed ceiling made of re­in­forced con­crete, its white Rauchkristall marble floors and the old counter di­viders made of black marble, into a ‘retro-fu­tur­is­tic’ space that could have come straight from a science fiction space odyssey from the last century.
Hailing from Berlin, Studio Aisslinger was re­spon­si­ble for the in­te­rior design, as with pre­vi­ous pro­jects in the 25hours hotels in Berlin and Zurich. O&O Baukunst added a stepped storey to the build­ing here. In gold an­odised steel, it blends in seam­lessly with the ex­ist­ing ar­chi­tec­ture and is rem­i­nis­cent of post-war mod­ernism design.

The ar­chi­tects are not trying to confine them­selves and their work. ‘It’s won­der­ful when it feels like the whole hotel matches the entire scene.’ There was more freedom of design in the floor plans. Based on the geome­tries of the rotunda, the rooms are divided into the inner and outer circle. While the rooms facing inward are ori­ented towards com­mu­nal spirit, the rooms facing outward offer privacy and panoramic views. The floor plan pro­vides for rooms shaped like pieces of pie, which the in­te­rior de­sign­ers answer with free-stand­ing beds, po­si­tioned or­thog­o­nally to the straight walls, cre­at­ing a very special spatial at­mos­phere. What is in­ter­est­ing is the col­lab­o­ra­tion between the ar­chi­tects and in­te­rior de­sign­ers in terms of se­lect­ing the handles. Both Laurids and Manfred Ortner and Werner Aisslinger de­signed their models for FSB, and both models are used in The Circle.

The FSB 1159 model by Ortner and Ortner evolved from an analy­sis of ex­ist­ing models. The result was a handle with soft shape tran­si­tions that provide an in­ti­mate feeling to the touch. It is in­stalled as nar­row-stile door handle FSB 06 1159 01263 6204, among others. Werner Aisslinger’s FSB 1226 model follows the four-point guide to grip almost un­know­ingly. The start­ing point of the evoca­tive shape was the dif­fer­ent move­ments of opening and closing a door. The model is in­stalled as window handle FSB 34 1226 00809 0105 and lever/lever set FSB 76 1226 61310 0105, among others. And all bath­rooms have WC set 72 1226 61954.

Building details

Photos: Steve Herud 

Location

25hours Hotel The Circle Cologne

Im Klap­per­hof 22-24
50670 Köln
Germany

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