A Room With A View

My Top 3

Sabina Land and Daniel Bauman are Swiss installation artists known for work dealing with architecture and space. They invite people to step inside the work and become a living part of the installation.

One of these installations, Everland Hotel, is currently perched high atop the Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary art museum in Paris. The hotel comes with an incredible view of another beloved architectural marvel that was once maligned by locals, the Eiffel Tower (According to Wikipedia: French novelist Guy de Maupassant — who claimed to hate the tower — supposedly ate lunch in the Tower’s restaurant every day. When asked why, he answered that it was the one place in Paris where you couldn’t see the Tower).

Everland is a Hotel with only one room including a bathroom, a king-size bed and a lounge. The bounteous dimensioned room represents the subjective dream of a hotel: the architecture, the playful details, as well as the request to steal the golden embroidered bath towels. All Everland guests are partaking in the project.

Also the concept for operating the hotel was defined by the artists. All facets are important constituents of the artistic idea: The room can be booked for one night only, the mini-bar is fully stocked and included in the price, breakfast is delivered to the door and a record collection stands at ones disposal.

The duo originally created Everland Hotel as an installation for the Swiss Expo 2002. Then it lived on the designers rooftop and was used as a guest room for four years. It spent a year perched on top of the Gallery for Contemporary Art in Leipzig, Germany, before moving on to its current location overlooking Paris. The idea was to create art that intersects public and a private space. The artists also enjoy the idea that the hotel travels, like its guests. It can live anywhere, hence the name, Everland.

The retro design of the hotel is the pure ’60s ideal of futureland: smooth, swooping curves and no hard lines.

Since Everland Hotel only has one room, booking is tight (according to the website, the hotel is currently booked solid). But if you get a chance to stay a night, the view, and the experience, is hard to match.

Everland Hotel is living in its current location until October 2008.