This one’s not for the tourists — Hotel Kube makes its home in an ill-traveled and unphotogenic corner of the 18th arrondissement, far from the postcard images of Paris’s traditional must-see sights. For the crowd of hipsters and design junkies that haunts these halls, however, the Kube is a sight unto itself; within this listed 19th-century building is a hotel that’s as cutting-edge as they come, a geometric fantasy from the same mind that conceived the fashion-forward Murano Urban Resort.
The first clue that there’s anything going on behind that classic facade is the glass cube out in the courtyard that’s home to the reception desk. The lobby lounge is a dark and enveloping space, surprisingly unpretentious, given the scene — striped-fur sofas strewn with pink stuffed dolls keep things from getting too serious and masculine. Up on the mezzanine, flanked by transparent bubble chairs, is the ice bar, a Scandinavian-style near-zero meat locker of a room serving chilled vodka to parka-wearing guests in metabolically-mandated half-hour shifts.
All this artifice might have you holding your breath as you approach your room, but there’s nothing to fear — the bedrooms are neither arch nor jokey, but simply well-designed, in a palette of near-whites livened by sparing splashes of color. A soft light seems to permeate, coming from everywhere (including under the platform bed) and the bathrooms particularly glow, set off from the bedrooms behind walls of glass bricks (cubic in shape, if you’re sensing some kind of theme).
Maybe the design boutique revolution was slow in coming to Paris, but nobody ever thought the city lacked for style — so while elsewhere in the world the concept seems to have lost a bit of its impact, places like the Kube are proof that there’s still plenty of fun to be had.
author watson@mouselink.net, source www.tablethotels.com