Fairmont Peace Hotel

Hirsch Bedner Associates is leading a project to preserve and restore one of Asia’s most famous hotels, which is being relaunched as the Fairmont Peace Hotel in 2010.

The iconic Art Deco building on the Bund opened as the Cathay Hotel in 1929. Prior to the Second World War, it was an Art Deco palace that attracted dignitaries, nobility, international celebrities, and discerning travellers from around the globe. The playwright Noel Coward is said to have completed one of his masterworks there.

HBA’s restoration integrates its Art Deco origins with the level of comfort, elegance, and convenience that today’s five-star hotel guests have come to expect.

At the heart of the renovation is the restoration of the hotel’s cruciform arcade – a dramatic central aisle culminating in a soaring rotunda, from which a shopping arcade branches off.

In addition the newly revitalised Fairmont Peace Hotel Shanghai will offer 300 deluxe guestrooms and suites. A selection of five restaurants and lounges will include the beloved Jazz Bar and a lobby lounge on the ground floor, a mezzanine-level sushi and cigar bar, and on the eighth floor, an exclusive Chinese restaurant and the Peace Grill. 

The hotel’s famous ‘Nine Nation Suites’ will remain a feature of the new hotel: the Indian, English, Chinese and American suites will undergo preservation, while the French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and German suites will be redeveloped, in keeping with their original concepts.
The original colour scheme relied on buff, cream and blue, and the new design retains these colours, but uses them in a modern way. The colours are complemented with copper, cast glass, grey marble and Noir St. Laurent, a black limestone used as a wall covering. The original hotel made extensive use of Lalique glass. Many of these pieces have gone missing, but enough remain to guide and inform the use of cast glass element in the public spaces.

www.hbadesign.com