Treehotel

That striking creation you’re looking above is a room in the Treehotel in Sweden. How awesome is that? Treehotel has six treehouse rooms, each with a completely different concept and design. The room above is called the Mirrorcube, and is by far my favorite.

Aside from the modern high-design aesthetic of the structures, the concept of the hotel is based around a complete retreat-to-nature approach, eschewing even snowmobile tours for their noise in favor of guided nature hikes. With the location in Lapland, 60km south of the Arctic Circle, guests are able to experience not only the surrounding nature, but also the phenomenon of midnight sun in summer and the Northern Lights in winter. You’re already staying in a treehouse, and then you add an experience like that, and really the whole thing could not get more surreal!

Check out the video below for more info…

For more treehouse posts, click the “treehouses” tag under “labels” in the info for this post.

Tasty Hotels

If you need to do some armchair traveling this weekend, I suggest you check out photographer Alex Profit’s site Tasty Hotels, a collection of beautiful hotels he has photographed.

Above (and below) is my favorite from the site, La Feline Blanche, which is at the base of Mont Blanc. Check out the gallery for more from this hotel and others from his site.

I also found the below video on Profit’s portfolio site– a video for Lancome’s Tresor campaign– and it’s a beautiful stop-motion compilation that takes you “around the world in 2000 photos.” Definite must if you have the armchair travel bug.

found via Emma’s Design Blogg

Castello di Vicarello

[Vicarello website]
[CoolHunter]

Where to Have a Martini in London

The Connaught Hotel in London, part of the Maybourne Group, has revamped their bar with the help of interior designer David Collins. In fact, the Maybourne Group hired a slew of designers to refresh their three iconic London hotels with new suites, rooms, and restaurants. In addition to getting design buzz, the investment is apparently paying off, as they are still achieving occupancy over 80%.

I’m not actually crazy for the re-designs of the other spaces, but this bar is awesome. Interestingly, notice how little the furniture has to do with the overall success of the room. I mean it matters of course, but as is usually the case with restaurants and bars, it’s the scale, finishes, and lighting that set the tone…

The mirror behind the bar, the gold back-plate on the sconces, the panelling, the black reflective finish in the pass-throughs between the rooms. The black reflective finish (plastic?) also adds a little modern edge, which is nice.

Even with the furniture, what matters most here is not the style of the furniture, but rather the color and texture– here, black leather and more black leather, even on the table tops (cool, also like the nailheads on the table edge, incidentally). The density of black furniture also helps to ground the room, which is important given its super high ceilings. And speaking of scale, imagine how differently the room would feel if the ceilings were two-thirds the height…

Also interesting is the repeated use of rounded edges — on the “windows” and doorway, echoed in the mirror through the doorway, even the chairs and tables are rounded and don’t have corners. I think it helps soften what could be a rather austere or formal space.

via wandermelon travel website

And for a totally random aside, these guys would look sharp in there, wouldn’t they?

Models backstage before the Zegna show at Milan A/W.

I think this photo is really cool visually – the way you immediately notice their hands because they are all dressed almost identically and evenly spaced across the frame. It actually looks more like a contemporary art photo to me than just a snapshot backstage– it seems so tense and like it’s begging for some kind of interpretation about why these guys are together and dressed alike (if you imagine they aren’t at a fashion show).

from Wallpaper’s photos of Milan A/W 2010.