Keating Hotel

Fast Design

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Italian firm Pininfarina is moving from car design (think Ferrari and Maserati) to hotel design. The firm's sleek, ergonomic design will debut in the Keating, set to open this fall in downtown San Diego complete with a restaurant, semi-private subterranean lounge, and glass-bottom rooftop pool. "[The city] is one of the most emerging and dynamic cities in the U.S.", says Paolo Pininfarina , CEO, Pininfarina Extra, the division of the company that specializes in product and interior design. "People have a very young lifestyle open to innovation and design trends. We also noticed a strong interest toward Italian brands like ours and their creative potential".

The designers kept the history of the hotel-it is one of the San Diego's oldest buildings-by leaving it's original Romanesque Revival facade, but inside, they used bright colors (a tribute to the city), dramatic lighting, unique materials, and custom designed rounded furnishings to make guests "say 'wow' upon entering the lobby," Pininfarina says. "The hotel is a perfect laboratory for design research: the user is more ready to accept radical and innovative solutions for a short period of time than in an everyday contest like their usual homes." To that end, each of the 35 guestrooms are completely open (there is no wall separating the bedroom and bathroom) and are outfitted with 12- to 15- foot ceilings, exposed brick walls, mahagony furniture, stainless steel and white details, and oversized windows.

And picking a neophyte hotel designer was a conscious choice: "I wanted a differentiate my hotel from all the others hotels in the market," says local real estate developer Eddie Kaen, who concieved and operates the hotel with local lifestyle group BOND Urban Habitat. "Knowing that the historic building was a Romanesque style, I thought it would be a perfect complement to bring an Italian design team to the table."