Soho House - Berlin

The past twelve months have been the most expansive in the fifteen year history of Soho House Group – the collection of private members clubs, restaurants, cinemas and hotels created by Nick Jones with the launch of the eponymous club in Soho London in 1995.

2010 has seen Jones return to Soho with the launch of Dean Street Townhouse. A new bedroom wing has been added to Shoreditch House. But most significantly, this year sees the opening of two long-in-gestation overseas ventures – Soho Beach House on Miami’s Collins Avenue, and Soho House Berlin. Located on the busy junction of Torstrße and Prenzlauer Allee, the latter property sits between the heart of Mitte and the fashionable neighbourhood of Prenzlauer Berg. The imposing Bauhaus symmetry of building’s pale façade belies the mere 40 guestrooms inside.

From the basement, to the courtyard, to the seventh storey Club Floor and rooftop above, there are bars, restaurants, lounges and discreet terraces aplenty. Wellness facilities include the Cowshed Relax Spa and Active Gym plus a 12 metre heated, open-air rooftop pool – a rarity in Berlin – lined with deep green tiles by Pyrolave. The second floor ‘Politbüro’ event space, a commanding volume dominated by the original wood panelling and dark walls, opens up to a street-facing terrace. A basement screening room is luxuriously appointed with 36 large, velvet-upholstered armchairs and ottomans. Some guestrooms are vast, 140m2 spaces with 2.5m2 beds, where even seven pillows seem reasonable.

As in other Soho House properties there is an industrial edge to the ‘public’ areas. From the whitewashed brickwork in the canteen-like surrounds of the House Kitchen, with its riveted steel topped tables, to the numerous newly exposed concrete pillars along corridors papered in a twee, pale-green and white broadstripe paper, the structure of the building is there for all to see. London-based Michaelis Boyd Associates handled the architectural conceptualisation of the building with the assistance of local project architects, JSK, who dealt with the planning regulations and coordinated construction.

“The building had lain vacant for some time, and needed a lot of attention to make it sound, explains Jean Dumas at Michaelis Boyd. “In doing so we tried to retain as much of the building’s integrity as possible.” One of their few new interventions is the spiral staircase from the reception area to a first floor gallery space that also accesses the gym.

Like Michaelis Boyd, the other main protagonist in the development, Susie Atkinson, is of British origin and both have experience working on other Soho House properties. There are countless British touches – guestrooms have boxy Roberts radios, hot water bottles in bedside cupboards and complimentary shortbread biscuits in silver bowls. The ironwork of the outside tables on the rooftop terrace is all retro swirls, reproduced by a manufacturer in Somerset. 

Atkinson has made extensive use of chintzy fabrics with floral patterns inspired by the US design doyenne of the 1940s Dorothy Draper, sourced from the Rose Cummings subsidiary of Dessin Fournir in Kansas. A bespoke pattern from Jean Munro in London has a black background – “much more practical in a hotel application,” explains Atkinson.

Another American-inspired piece is a lengthy wooden bureau, reproduced in three sizes for all guestrooms except the attic rooms. Atkinson commissioned the bureaus that house the minibar, tea and coffee set, safe and ‘cheese’ locker from UK-based cabinetmakers George Smith. The antiqued effect of these and many other new pieces is stunningly realistic –  Atkinson estimates that only 20% of the furniture is genuine ‘vintage’. New too are the hooded Porter chairs in the basement. The asymmetrical ‘fireside’ chairs alongside the curved wall in the Club Lounge are copies, as are the 1940s-style sun-loungers beside the rooftop pool. The ballroom-style chandelier above the bar on the Club Floor is genuine however, sourced from a Park Lane hotel in London via a reclamation yard where it had lain in a box for decades.

Atkinson approached the design of each guestroom by first considering the bed. Sturdy polished wooden bases are topped by extravagant padded bed headboards upholstered in velvet – a fanned scallop shape for one, a columnar style for another. Several rooms have antiqued pewter freestanding tubs on the reclaimed herringbone parquet. Bathrooms, lined with locally sourced cream glazed brick, are large and mos have double basin units, reclaimed and often re-glazed. “More reflective of a Berlin where everything goes are the attic rooms,” explains Atkinson of these smaller rooms, where primary colours are used, painted metal cupboards double as bedside tables and hanging space is replaced by open racks.

The building has a chequered past. After launching as a department store in 1929, it became the headquarters of Hitler Youth and later the East German communist party. But in bringing a feeling of updated English gentility into gritty Berlin, Jones and his design team have ensured its future looks brighter.

Rooms    40 guestrooms
Dining   House Kitchen, Rooftop Bar & Kitchen, Cecconi’s Restaurant
Drinking    Club Bar, Snug, Sitting Room
Leisure    Cowshed Relax Spa, Cowshed Active Gym, outdoor pool
Facilities    Politbüro Event space, Library, Screening Room