Thursday 7 July 2011

Hotel Architecture

This is the remarkable lobby of a hotel I stayed in recently in Asti. It was pleasingly run-down. This picture I think makes it look better kept than it actually is. Presumably dating from 1970s (any ideas from the architecturally-minded?) the lobby's island feature really caught my eye. Someone has filled the base with that sort of white shredded plastic packaging material you find inside the box when you order an electronic item from Amazon. One of the half-dead pot plants has a faded red ribbon tied around it. The three distant guests marked the height of activity whilst I was there. Silence invariably reigned apart from an occasional trolley bag being dragged across the lobby by a weary sales representative heading for his dusty Fiat Croma and yet another meaningless appointment.

4 comments:

Peter Ashley said...

Lovely, lovely post. This ought to be a location in an Italian Iain Sinclair novel. Is there an arterial road outside, one that you can't hear the traffic because of smeared double-glazing?

Philip Wilkinson said...

Remarkable. Probably 1970s, though that upward-sweeping ceiling could almost be from the previous decade. The reps, the suitcases, the packing material: it all makes me tired just looking at it.

Affer said...

I'm impressed; normally you only see the ceilings..........

John McClane said...

Bloody fantastic red chairs, though. On the right. You could have offered to swap them for some mdf crap from ikea or somewhere and sold them for a fortune on ebay.

Or you could have given them to me.