Artemide lights up The Westin Hamburg in the Elbphilharmonie

Sofocle

Nothing but light and expansiveness

The Westin Hamburg, the luxury hotel in the Elbphilharmonie, is truly stunning thanks to its spectacular architecture, its views of the Hanseatic city and its feeling of wellbeing. Making a crucial contribution to this are the 3,592 lights from Artemide, many of which were specially made for the concert hall.

As the Queen Mary 2 glides past, so close does she seem from the 20th floor of the Elbphilharmonie and its luxury hotel, The Westin Hamburg, that you believe you could put your hand out and touch the luxury liner. The room is full of light and expansiveness. Slim steel profiles and curved windowpanes the height of the room direct your gaze to the warehouse district. It doesn’t get much more spectacular than this.

The interior feels pleasantly uncluttered and restrained. An elaborate lighting concept ensures guests immediately have a sense of wellbeing. As soon as they enter the lobby, visitors are welcomed by specially made wall lights that give an idea of the lighting mood awaiting them in their rooms. With engineers and lighting designers from Artemide, Berlin-based designer Tassilo Bost developed a completely new lighting system called Sofocle.

Its curved frame made from clear acrylic picks up the spectacular facades created by leading Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron in a scaled-down dimension. The lighting range is bespoke, specially made for this extraordinary building.
Sofocle follows a clear assembly plan. The curved acrylic cover is fitted with an opal diffusor film cover and sits in a lacquered white frame.

“Behind the curved acrylic glass disc, we’ve placed a warm-toned light-scattering film that could be imprinted with any kind of motif. This means that over time the style of the rooms can be influenced or changed. We developed this idea with the technicians from Artemide in Milan for over a year”, said Tassilo Bost.

What looks great as a bedside lamp can also serve as a desk lamp or, with an elongated frame, as a floor lamp as well.

Sofocle

Restaurant „The Saffron“

Timeless and specially developed for this building: Sofocle

Sofocle is timeless and suits all kinds of furnishing styles, making it hard to believe that Tassilo Bost actually developed the lighting concept over ten years ago when no one had any idea of the delays that would occur in the Elbphilharmonie’s construction. Lighting technology has developed hugely since then. As a consequence Sofocle is fitted with an LED and adds very practical aspects to its aesthetic durability by being economical to run and low maintenance.

The challenge consisted of combining the special ambiance of the Westin Hamburg and its rooms – up to 110 metres above the ground – with guests’ desire for privacy (at night) and views (day and night). This is because they have convex floor-to-ceiling panorama windows, even across two storeys in the Maisonette Suite on the 19th floor. Luckily all the panes are individually coated where there would be a risk of too much sun entering the hotel’s 205 rooms and 39 suites. This means glare is avoided and the rooms are not heated by the sun to an uncontrolled extent.

While the rooms and suites start at around 40 metres up and rise to just beneath the Elbphilharmonie’s roof, the red brick building of the former Kaispeicher A houses the Elb Spa and pool and “The Saffron” restaurant. It has a sophisticated ambiance and follows a “balanced design concept with atmospheric illumination and understated decoration that ensure the emphasis is on its culinary specialities”. In its creation of various specially made items, this is yet another example of Artemide always finding the right solution to project-specific requirements.

 

Special lighting for the restaurant and bar

“The Saffron” restaurant is bathed in warm light. Tassilo Bost and Artemide developed pendant lights that look a little like lobster pots. In all over 7,500 m of leather strips were used in these lights, crafted to loop around a wire frame. The light is emitted below in a concentrated fashion, creating a pleasant and precise brightness over the tables, and diffuses sideways into the room without glare. This creates a nice ambiance and fits perfectly with the leather-lined walls of the old warehouse. The windows give the impression of being framed moving pictures that, depending on the time of the day, provide different snapshots of the harbour.

Perfect illumination in the “The Bridge Bar” is produced by lights specially designed for the space. The pendant lights over the free-standing tables produce illumination that fits perfectly with the view of the waterfront and its ships. Tassilo Bost: “As we’ve mainly furnished the hotel in a purist style, it was important to position the light atmosphere in the realm of warm tones. For this to happen all the light sources had to be dimmable. Different day and evening moods can easily be programmed.”

„The Bridge Bar“

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