the history of internal design

One of the most magnificent historic hotels in the entire globe is located in Manhattan, New York. The majority of New Yorkers and tourists alike are enamored with the structure, known as The Ace Hotel. The hotel arouses the desires of many guests with its native artwork, imaginative interior décor, and, most importantly, its excellent furnishings. The interior decor of Ace Hotel is inspired by Roman domestic architecture from antiquity (Domus). The Ace Hotel still has a wonderful appearance, much like the homes from ancient Rome. The two structures in contemporary and ancient spaces share some insights in their interior models such as the structures of the floor, the walls and the roof among other features. Past designs have inspired most of the current internal style in buildings. Ace Hotel, remodeled in 2009, is an example these structures. This research seeks to identify the relationship between antique and modern interior decorations and the features from the prehistoric ornamentation that inspired that of the present as well as analyze the current design to get the value of each of the design pieces.

Comparison Between Interior of Ace Hotel and Domus

The Ace Hotel initially called the Breslin Guesthouse was first built in 1904. For a period, the hotel’s glory and praise had dwindled. However, two of the best specialists in interior decoration were employed rekindle the beauty of the hotel. In 2009, Williams and Roman the two interior designers made a significant transformation of the guesthouse. The name was then changed to Ace from Breslin. The new building was remodeled using a mixture of the previous and the new construction materials. The one hundred and sixty-five square feet tall building contains three hundred and forty-four rooms. William and Roman remodeled the building with intuitions from the lives along the streets and innovations in the current and old society. The designers aimed at regenerating the ancient architecture in the form of the current one.

Like the Domus, the exterior walls of Ace Hotel are partitioned in rectangular shaped panels and from afar the panels are painted with white and a shade lemonade. The inside of the building is rectangular with outstanding poles visible from the entrance of the lobby. The roofs in both buildings are divided into deeply caved in panels. The ceiling stands at approximately 18 feet from the ground. Unlike the colors used on Ace, yellow and red colors were predominantly used in old Roman houses. The roof of the two buildings is built high from the ground. Ace’s mosaic wooden floor pics a similar inspiration from the marble mosaic floor of the Romans. The furniture in the lobby at Ace Hotel is made of wood. Wood was the same material used for furniture by the Romans. The wood was used when bronze was missing. The design of the hotel is fixed to fit individuals from the higher social class. The interior design embraces technology in the aspect that the boardroom, a seven hundred square space, is customized with a twenty chairs’ walnut wooden table with sixteen speakers and eight speakers fixed on the ceiling to create an artistic telecommunication technique. The room is fitted with other essential high technology equipment such as a three-dimensional monitor for efficient teleconferencing.

The hotel space is tactically separated to fit a variety of activities and events that take place in the hotel. For instance, the liberty space is a flexible two thousand seven hundred square room with a ceiling ten feet high, a parquet-like floor and highly qualified professional service staff. Such a combination of design is suitable for a variety of events and activities such as wedding and cocktail parties, as well as for business meetings and live music concerts among other functions. The room is situated explicitly near the bar where drinks can efficiently be served. The liberty room in Ace Hotel serves the same purpose as the triclinium of the Domus. The triclinium was a room fitted with artistic decorations with other wall paintings to entice the eyes of the guests in the room. This place as the liberty space was used for elaborate ceremonial dinner parties. The get-togethers involved feasting, entertainment and other social discussions most of which were non-work related. The attendees at the part were organized in order of the most influential people in the society to the least. The seats next to the owner of the house or the chair of the assembly were reserved to the affluent and respectable people in the community. A similar trait is seen in the modern setting of the seats in the liberty room during events. More so, the attic suites are furnished with moon like coaches, sizeable wooden eating tables, and a claw foot bathtubs as well as full-size refrigerators. The suits are intended for intimate gatherings, other small parties such cocktails or groups to make arrangements for vast night-time outs. William and Roman design style work out well to suit the specific needs the guests. Each room is equipped with different furniture to fit each of the occasions that each group might want to hold.

Ace has a variety of audience that comes to rent rooms. Nevertheless, the interior is separated into different spaces to allow customers to hold other life transition events such as weddings. Therefore, the hotel is satisfactory in using interior design to inform the layout of its space. The hotel’s targets reception from males and females aged twenty-five to thirty-five years, middle-class earners and the elites, and those having stable jobs. The hotel targets the above group of people because they are most likely able to cater for the expenses incurred in the hotel.

The interior of the hotel targeted these group of people, and to date, the hotel is known for its excellent conditions that require individual with stable finances only to book accommodation. The Ace Hotel was not the only decoration that William and Roman worked on. These two designers had initially furnished the Royalton Hotel in New York. Like Ace Guesthouse, Royalton Inn also has some of its furniture made of wood and the coaches are mainly made of leather. Additionally, in the two designs, William and Roman have used deem lighting effects in the main hall. The essence is to create a relaxing mood for the customers after their daily chores. The lobby is darker than the rest of the room in the building such that even with the lights on from morning to evening, the customer cannot differentiate the timings. The lighting works well to create a timeless atmosphere for sufficient relaxation of the guests. The inspiration to use deem lighting for the lobby is a character that is embraced by the Roman homes. The hall was where the bar was. In most cases, after a day’s chores people would want to come home to s relaxing mood. The deem lighting was well known to achieve that calming feeling. The lobby in Ace serves the same function as the atrium in the Domus. The atrium was the focus of the whole house. It lay the outline of how the building looks. The atrium was the room for political and social gatherings. The atrium just like the lobby also acted as the waiting room for the guests waiting to see the head of the house. Being the place where the visitors would spend most of the time when visiting, the owner of the house invested most of their funds in decorating an ensuring the house created a welcoming and calming atmosphere. William and Roman applied the same idea to guaranteeing the lobby was attractive and peaceful with the best relaxing atmosphere. The interior décor of Ace hotel is also inspired by the continued development of the technology used in interior designs. William and Roman use current art designs to blend the ancient styles. For instance, the structure if the building is the same as the houses of the Romans, However, a combination of modern color schemes is used to enhance the appearance of the hotel. More lighting is used to make the building notable and glow in the during the night to attract more customers. During the expansion and remodeling, engineers in charge of the reconstruction took into consideration the increasing number of cultural events in Manhattan and the growing number of the tourists in the region. These factors gave the engineers the insights on how to resize the rooms to fit the ever increasing numbers of guests.

Conclusion

Ace Hotel and the Domus of the Romans have standard features that inspired the reconstruction of Ace in 2009. The discussion above elaborated these factors and indicated the similarities in the art of the different rooms and their functions; Therefore, as mentioned above, it is evident to say there is a relationship between antique and modern interior decorations and that there are features from the prehistoric ornamentation that inspired the present designs.

Figure 1. The lobby of Ace Hotel. See the deem lighting, the white pillars, the wooden infrastructure and the coaches as well as the rectangular shaped panels of the roof

Figure 2. The atrium of the Domus. See the pillars in the room, the rectangular panel roofs and the decorations in the hall. The ceiling is as high as the one seen in Ace’s lobby

Bibliography

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Herculaneum: Past and Future (London: Frances Lincoln Limited, 2011).

Becker, Jeffrey, Roman Domestic Architecture (Domus). Retrieved on: 11th December, 2017

Carol Mattusch, Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2008.)

Fintell, David Robert, Faizan Baig, Evens Hsiung, Andy Kim, and Bernice Gao Yupei. “IMC Plan–Ace Hotel.” Page, 1-27

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/roman/beginners-guide-rome/a/roman-domestic-architecture-domus