Gastwerk Hotel Hamburg

With the opening in January 2000 the Gastwerk Hotel Hamburg set new standards in terms of designer hotels and hotel design.

Come for the design – stay for the experience!

It is not simply due to the warm tone of the brick walls, the high lattice windows or the dark-brown wooden floors that Hamburg’s first designer hotel conveys a relaxed, cosy atmosphere above and beyond that of a loft’s ambience.

Anybody entering the lobby of the Gastwerk Hotel is stepping back outside again, or at least that’s what it seems like at first. A 600 m² large and five-storey high room welcomes the hotel guest with exemplary openness and breadth. Where previously 5,000 tonnes of coal were stored, bridges now lead freely through the former industrial construction, linking up different levels and sections of the building.

Daylight streams in through the entire hall and gives the structure a certain transparency. Every so often, the bare brick walls are in evidence, and yet they do not isolate anything. The Hamburg Gastwerk Hotel is not an enclosed space – it is the architectural expression of spaciousness.

In spite of this expansiveness, you can feel structure and harmony in the spatial compositions wherever you look. In keeping with a sophisticated dramatic composition, visual and spatial fixed points were positioned, such as the large church clock behind the reception, which permanently shows “five to twelve”, the video screens or the monstrosity of an animal feed milling machine from the intervening period when the building was used as a factory for animal feed. Even the lift, which is freely built into the hall, is pure orchestration of a vertical structure.

It is due in particular to the Gastwerk’s own understanding of shapes, materials and colours – and the individual and also harmonious combination of all its elements. The aspiration to give the hotel a special charm has been put into effect with a great sense of sensuality, clarity and functionality, and the resolute renunciation of the typical hotel design has successfully been achieved. Sterile boredom doesn’t stand a chance here. From the impressive hall via the numerous areas of sojourn and retreat to the spacious atrium, loft and business rooms and suites: wherever you look, the guest is provided with an ambience full of light, air and aesthetic self-conception.