Much more than a room with a view
This room is 1,440 rooms, because it changes every minute of the day. At reception, when checking-in, they should release the following information: "For your own good and subsequent happiness, we recommend that you stay in your room without leaving and with your eyes wide open for 24 hours. Once past, you can enjoy the rest of the hotel.”
The hotel is in Miami and it is the ** Four Seasons Hotel at the Surf Club **, and this determination not to leave the room is due to the fact that it is a room with glass walls that flies over the ocean.
It is exposed to light and darkness. Who sleeps in one of the Ocean Views of this hotel must have no shame. The modesty, that loss of opportunities.
The entry into it achieves that effect for which many hotels would pay (in fact, they pay) many millions of euros/dollars/pounds.
Is about that moment when we enter, we drop the handbag anywhere, we leave the friendly hotel worker who accompanies us talking to explain how to operate the air conditioning and we stand motionless in front of the window.
Who can speak says: “Oh”. Who doesn't, shut up. The feeling of being in a transparent room overlooking the turquoise sea is “oh”.
Richard Meier was in charge of reimagining the Surf Club last year
Richard Meier (with the invaluable help of that turquoise sea) was responsible for this effect. The architect, Pritzker winner in 1984 , was in charge of reimagining the Surf Club last year, which was one of the first private clubs in the world.
This place was a tycoon's idea Harvey Forestone , which inaugurated it on New Year's Eve 1930. The building was built by Russell T. Pancoast following a fashionable style of the moment, the Mediterranean, that hooked with what the owner proposed: an oasis of pleasures.
The chosen location favored it: the little town of Surfside, north of Miami Beach , away from any gaze. Whoever came here just wanted to be seen by his peers.
The usual suspects alternated at the Surf Club: Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Churchill, Marlene Dietrich and European and Hollywood royalty.
Alcohol ran through its halls until the Prohibition years: the bottles arrived by sea via Cuba or the Bahamas. In the Surf Club there were no prohibitions.
Who sleeps in one of the Ocean Views of this hotel must lack modesty
Almost a century later this place has been resurrected with a less wild air but maintaining the desire to be a place of enjoyment. Four Seasons has recovered and reconverted it (there's a lot of prefix re- here) into a huge complex where it intends to replicate the extraordinary service and air of the glorious years of the club.
and here comes in Meier. He was the architect chosen to add three more to the original building that would include a 77 room hotel (among them, the transparent one we are talking about), cabins (this format deserves another space) and residences, also surrounded by glass.
Why Meyer? This white-haired man was capable of building something that contrasted with what was already there but shared scale and the same respect for the context. here it was necessary crystal (just so as not to forget that context) and sumptuous materials, and Meier knew how to handle them.
It would have to be something that won't get old soon , that would stand the test of time and Meier, with his particular Modernism, knew how to do something of the present but timeless, that which is so easy to write but so difficult to do.
Meier searched, as he stated at the time of it in a video: a relationship between open and closed, transparency and opacity. He must have liked the result because he declared that He would "live there."
Let's go back to the room on the eighth floor. All the ones that face the ocean are between floors 5 and 12, that is the limit allowed in the Surfside area. Is enough for observe the world from above
From this room you can see the rest of the building, transparent and light, too the pool, the palm trees, the boardwalk, the beach, some Surfside and a lot of ocean.
Perhaps we can watch people bathing in the pool and, if we sharpen our eyes, we will see how they eat the fresh fruit they offer to avoid the heat. In Miami it is always hot.
We will also see other guests who, like us, look and look around from their rooms. Some dine on the terrace. This is enough of a show to not need TV or series.
We will also go inside the room, and it will be like being outside, with so much glass in it. We will see how it dawns, how it gets dark and how the light changes every minute, even the dark does. That's why we insist on not missing the show, what would they say over there.
Surf Club was one of the first private clubs in the world
The room maintains a curious rivalry with the view of the outside. On the one hand, it cannot compete with it and with the transparent architecture. On the other, she refuses to be, just discreet.
Joseph Dirand, the person in charge of the interiors of the hotel has caught this dichotomy. This Frenchman, known for his Frenchified minimalism (which is never quite minimalism), designed some spaces in light colors that seem simple, but they are not.
The room exudes quiet luxury and, as they like to say in the hotel, "quiet drama" If we walk our hand over the surfaces of the room we will touch several textures: there are plaster on the wall, rattan at the gates, connemara green marble in furniture, cotton in textiles, brass in lamps, glasses on the tables, travertine on the sofa (spectacular) and on the desk where we will leave a computer that we will not use…
Sit at the breakfast nook and watch the light change and glancing at a book is something they should recommend at reception.
"Quiet Drama"
This is not a room for everyone. Goodness. Being in it during the day is majestic. The feeling of exposure and vulnerability that being surrounded by glass gives is offset by the power of the architecture. This dance between fragility and power is permanent.
The night is another story. When the room begins to darken, his personality changes and he becomes something more cinematic , the silent drama that Dirand proposes here is more excessive: there is darkness everywhere and total exposure.
We are not used to sleeping in sight of the world. We could black out the rooms, but who's the unimaginative being that would.
Feel like waking up several times at night to see how the light is changing and dawn is coming and each of those times will be an “oh”. In this room you can say "Oh" about 1,440 times.
Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Churchill, Marlene Dietrich... they were all at the Surf Club