Future-style Living and Eating – Already a Reality?
All over the world small business owners are experimenting with innovative ideas for hotels and restaurants. We spotlight five stimulating new schemes.
There are many innovative ideas. We present five concepts. What exactly does innovation actually mean in the host industry and what does it depend on? Five concepts from the metropolises of Vienna, London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Barcelona.
Brlo Brwhouse, Berlin
© Seren Dal
VIENNA
Real Deal with a Difference
Busy shopping thoroughfares with retailers just around the corner in the side streets going to the wall: this is an all too familiar phenomenon in many large towns and cities. Vienna’s Grätzlhotel concept bucks this trend with a fresh take on modern tourism. Empty shops are transformed into hotels where the guests not only get to stay in cool neighbourhoods, they get to engage with them as well. "Gräzl" means "district" or "quarter" in Viennese dialect. The ground-floor rooms have names such as "the lampshade maker" or "the cobbler", echoing their previous function as shops. This is a unique twist on the hospitality sector that combines the individuality of a private dwelling with the care and attention of a hotel.
Grätzlhotel, Vienna
© Heidrun-Henke
VIENNA
Real Deal with a Difference
Busy shopping thoroughfares with retailers just around the corner in the side streets going to the wall: this is an all too familiar phenomenon in many large towns and cities. Vienna’s Grätzlhotel concept bucks this trend with a fresh take on modern tourism. Empty shops are transformed into hotels where the guests not only get to stay in cool neighbourhoods, they get to engage with them as well. "Gräzl" means "district" or "quarter" in Viennese dialect. The ground-floor rooms have names such as "the lampshade maker" or "the cobbler", echoing their previous function as shops. This is a unique twist on the hospitality sector that combines the individuality of a private dwelling with the care and attention of a hotel.
LONDON
Let's Hack Fine Dining!
While food from a printer may not be an entirely new concept, a restaurant in which not only the food but also the furnishings and utensils are all the product of 3D-printing certainly is. In 2016, a team from Dutch printing specialists 3D By Flow opened a three-day pop-up restaurant in the Old Truman Brewery in London’s fashionable Shoreditch. What was initially intended as a temporary experiment was such an outstanding success that the restaurant is currently on a world tour. The culinary genius behind it all is the Spanish Michelin-star chef Mateo Blanch, whose team of technologists, artists and culinary experts manage to conjure up nine-course meals from pixel to plate.
foodink.io
Zoku, Amsterdam
© Ewout Huibers
BARCELONA
Labyrinth to Another World
Nobody in the world makes restaurants like Albert Adrià, so when the Spanish celebrity chef (and younger brother of Ferran Adrià) announced his plans to create a place that would "reinvent the way we go to restaurants," it was clear that something very special was in the offing. And Adrià was as good as his word. You need a bar code to get into Enigma, which opened its doors at the start of 2017, and it takes several hours to literally wander through this culinary wonderland, which is spread over 7,534 square metres. The restaurant seats a maximum of 24 guests, who can feast on up to 40 taster dishes, an experience in which the physical properties of the delicacies meld into a harmonious whole. Yet in spite of all this, the atmosphere is not elitist, since it is imperative to celebrity chef Adrià that the focus should be exclusively on the food and the diner.
Header picture: © PepoSegura
Enigma, Barcelona
© PepoSegura
BARCELONA
Labyrinth to Another World
Nobody in the world makes restaurants like Albert Adrià, so when the Spanish celebrity chef (and younger brother of Ferran Adrià) announced his plans to create a place that would "reinvent the way we go to restaurants," it was clear that something very special was in the offing. And Adrià was as good as his word. You need a bar code to get into Enigma, which opened its doors at the start of 2017, and it takes several hours to literally wander through this culinary wonderland, which is spread over 7,534 square metres. The restaurant seats a maximum of 24 guests, who can feast on up to 40 taster dishes, an experience in which the physical properties of the delicacies meld into a harmonious whole. Yet in spite of all this, the atmosphere is not elitist, since it is imperative to celebrity chef Adrià that the focus should be exclusively on the food and the diner.
Header picture: © PepoSegura