Kimpton Hotels are unique boutique hotels, with no uniform brand design, offering genuine and local experiences. Kimpton Hotels like to describe themselves as a brand that “offers luxury without the attitude,” with locally loved restaurants and bars and a very personal style. The goal was to create a hotel with a local approach, handcrafted and custom-designed, with unique spaces that reflect Barcelona’s lifestyle and architecture.

The design strategy was to create a dialogue between the hotel and Barcelona, and more specifically, a close connection with the neighborhood where the property is located. Ciutat Vella, meaning “Old City,” which is indeed the oldest part in town, is undoubtedly a different area with its slow pace of life -- an artsy neighborhood with an old body and a young soul filled with small pedestrian streets, museums, street art, small shops, traditional bars and cafes, improvised skate parks and much more.

The idea was to create different and unique spaces inside the hotel, inviting both guests and locals to stay, enjoy, meet and interact. Each of the spaces reflects the local lifestyle, with a chic and joyful atmosphere, unforcedly elegant and genuine at the same time.

The design brings handcrafted elements, local brands and art, colorful ceramic patterns, together with reinterpreted references to its historical past, mixed with a contemporary spontaneous design approach that gives Vividora Hotel a unique, energetic personality.

One of the challenges was organizing the public program, as the street level was especially small. The strategy was using this street level exclusively for the bar. Cafe Got acts as a connection between the city and the hotel: an active space with a long facade facing the street, inviting guests and locals to enter and interact.

The lobby area is located on a mezzanine level. A double-height space connects it with the bar while bringing a watery effect to the space through a cascade of glass lamps. Three stones perform as reception desks, referencing the stone fountains in the Gothic patios. The lobby space is completed with a lounge area and a co-working table.

Barcelona, and especially its Old City in contact with the sea, is a city full of contrast and contradictions, which harmonically coexist. In the rooms, we wanted to reflect the local lifestyle, with a relaxed and unforced chic atmosphere. Color, temperature and materiality are the main ingredients of the design, playing a game of contrasts, as in the city itself.

Barcelona is a really colorful city. To select only two colors to represent such a city, those would be, without a doubt, the warm terracotta tones of its architecture and the fresh bluish tones of the Mediterranean Sea. As in an abstract art composition, El Equipo Creativo’s design team brought two protagonist color-blocks to the Vividora rooms: the warm leather headboard in the sleeping area opposed to the colder, bluish, crafted ceramic dividers of the bathroom area.

The bathroom area is one of the protagonists, as it is visually connected to the rest of the room. This strategy helped the designers broaden the spatial feeling, while also bringing natural light into the washbasin and the shower area, behind the glazed wall.

Continuing with the game of contrasts, the warm wooden flooring and surfaces serve as a perfect counterpoint for the colder, stony, elegant surfaces of the water area, while black, orthogonal metal structures frame round mirrors and lamps.

In the suites, a similar color, temperature and material strategy was created, based on playing with contrasts and opposites. In this case, with upgraded comfort features, as a stylish living room area or the extraordinary experience of a bathtub facing the private balcony and the views of the city from the highest floor of the building.

Once again, the designers worked with an open program concept, where the different activities of the room mix in new ways. The result is an artsy and elegant room with a genuine, local touch.