Story Hotel - Stockholm

The chief characteristic of the 82-guestroom Story Hotel, previously a residential block just ‘backstage’ from the glamour of Stockholm’s premier retail street, Birger Jarlsgatan, is its unfinished look. “We wanted the building to have a soul from the start... and within the loose brief from the owner the hotel needed to be an inspiring, exciting and relaxed environment,” explains Daniel Wengelin of Koncept, a Stockholm-based interior design agency whose work includes retail interiors for fashion house Acne, and the Copper Hill ski resort in Åre, central Sweden.

The façade of the street frontage has been removed and not replaced, exposing the unrefined, original concrete. Existing concrete pillars and walls from the semi-basement, former garage have been left largely as they were found, complete with graffiti. At least one wall in each guestroom has been stripped back to the raw plaster. Revealed cracks are roughly filled; a few sections of wallpaper remain along with disused electricity meters.

This sense of imperfection is also seen in the serving and waiting island in the restaurant and the mini-bar / safe unit in the guestrooms where the boxlike casework is stacked in an offset manner. Signage is simply stencilled on to walls. Prints, supplied by Wonderwall and available for purchase, are wallpapered, overlapping each other in a casual manner. Buttons are randomly sewn onto the purple velvet upholstery in the restaurant. Corridors too show a sense of difference. The carpets appear to be made from off-cuts of the highly patterned sort so typical of many hotels. Lighting, inspired by the task lighting of the construction site, consists of a series of delicately shaded, cone-shaped lamps strung amongst the exposed ducting of the ceiling. The brief may have been wide but Wengelin was asked to provide “all of the qualities of a luxury hotel but at a lower cost to both developer and therefore the guests.”
And Sören Hullberg, General Manager, is keen to emphasise the advantage this give him. “With construction and refurbishment costs running at approximately 750,000 Krona compared with the norm of 1-1.3 million Krona we can price very competitively in the market,” he explains. Reservations are only taken over the internet with payment made in advance just like an airfare. “The most surprising thing has been the acceptance of this system,” Hullberg continues. “We would not have had such strong occupancy if this were not the case”.

Hullberg is something of a Stockholm hotel industy veteran with spells as Operations Director for Hilton’s hotels in the city, and at Overlook Hospitality consultancy. He is also the man who gave us Swedish meatballs at Ikea during a stint with the retail giant earlier in his career.
He partly attributes the low construction costs to having appointed both Koncept and Janrick & Co., a local construction company, right from the start. Apart from the inspiration for the corridor lighting, Koncept also saw the potential for re-use of the original apartment doors, which had to be substituted for fire safety, as the bed headboards. In situ these come complete with nameplates and letterboxes. “Flexibility during the building process allowed us to react as we came across inevitable surprises,” explains Hullberg, “the rotten roof of the lounge had to be replaced and in doing so we gained the roof terrace.” In the summer, the Backyard, as the graffiti-covered area is known, may have no view but it rocks to the best-looking crowd in the city.

The same audience flock to the bar and restaurant, know as the Kitchen, for which Koncept won the restaurant category at the 2009 European Hotel Design Awards. Both strongly exhibit the blend of austerity and chic, seen throughout the hotel. In the bar, a brass counter top contrasts with the corrugated tin of the front of the bar. In the Kitchen, plush velvet banquettes sit next to raw concrete walls, whilst guests eat excellent food under exposed sprinklers and high-level windows with brass-lined reveals.

Brass is a key material and is used extensively in the guestrooms. There is no cupboard but a gracious yet sturdy, brass, A-frame with hangers. Mirrors are edged with brass stripe and hang from brass hooks. Deep, round basins, which come in a variety of playful coloured patterns, sit on brass-covered plinths. With no protective finish the idea is that the brass will develop a patina over time.

Story Hotel does not provide all of the qualities of a luxury hotel but the absence of expected finishes are conveniently a savings measure and more importantly a design statement. Story Hotel does not take itself too seriously and delivers a wonderful design narrative at a very affordable price point.

Story Hotel
Riddargatan 6,
114 35 Stockholm, Sweden
Tel +46 8 545 039 40
www.storyhotels.com

Rooms 82 guestrooms
Dining The Kitchen
Drinking The Bar / Backyard
Facilities The Attic meeting space