WALKING THROUGH THE lobby of Australia’s Hotel Hotel is like swimming in a sea of wood. The ceiling structure alone comprises 2,150 strips of wood. Thousands more pieces of recycled wood line the walls, creating irregular patterns around the building’s prefabricated concrete pillars.
A total of 1,200 steel rods hold the material in place. With the timber coming in different widths and sizes, no two surfaces are the same, each being individually formed and placed at varying distances from each other. More than 50 artists, designers and craftspeople were brought in to create the eclectic interiors for this hotel, of which the lobby is just one example.
March Studio designed the lobby and the magnificent staircase, which was formed by arranging stacks of recycled planks next to each other. All the wood has been gathered from nearby building sites and much of the timber comes from the blackbutt tree, which grows in the coastal forests of New South Wales and Queensland.«
