Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life

×

Expand

Photo: Takumi Ota

Richard Hutton, "Llayers Llove Hotel, Room 307", Tokyo, 2010

Richard Hutton, "Llayers Llove Hotel, Room 307", Tokyo, 2010

Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life charts the evolution of the hotel from an isolated and utilitarian structure to a cultural phenomenon that figures prominently around the world. The scope of the project is global, an acknowledgement of the pervasive presence of a commercial network that is architecturally formed, geographically distributed and socially defined. The title of the exhibition is in part a reference to the influential 1932 Hollywood film Grand Hotel, in which the lives of individual guests interweave during a brief hotel stay. The film depicts a thoroughly modern condition and demonstrates the potency of the hotel as both a real and symbolic nexus of human movement, interaction and ideas.

The exhibition’s four main themes—travel, design, the social and culture—consider the vital role of travel and design in the development of the hotel, as well as the hotel’s important role as a site of social interaction and cultural production. Each theme speaks to a critical force that has given shape and meaning to the hotel. Together they tell the collective story of this important built form, elucidating its prominence in the public consciousness and reflecting the nature of the hotel itself: engaging, innovative, provocative, ephemeral. Quite simply, the hotel is a veritable laboratory of modern life.