Michelberger Hotel - Berlin

There’s an air of organised chaos as Sleeper arrives late at the Michelberger Hotel. A band are holding an impromptu rehearsal in the bar. Owner Tom Michelberger is checking guests in behind reception, glass of red wine in hand. The hotel’s resident dog is roaming around. Laptop bags, guitar cases, and backpacks are piled up in the lobby. The Big Lebowski is playing on a TV screen in the corner.

In many ways, the Michelberger Hotel reflects contemporary Berlin – a city which is, as the hotel team describe it, “raw, creative, rebellious and constantly recreating itself.”

Sleeper immediately recognises 31-year-old Tom Michelberger – the central figure in the patchwork of young friends who have come together to create the hotel – from his previous appearance in our ‘Guestbook’ page.

Having checked in, before heading to our room, we are sat at the bar enjoying a White Russian (they’re big on The Big Lebowski here) as Michelberger explains the fresh approach he and his crew have brought to the hotel. Thanks to the late hour, and the strong cocktails, our recollection of the conversation is distinctly Dude-like. But we do remember that throughout, he refers to the hotel as “the house of a group of friends”. It’s a house that happens to have been created by renowned designer Werner Aisslinger, working with movie stylists Anja Knauer and Sibylle Oellerich, but as Michelberger would have it, “a house of friends all the same.”

It’s the antithesis of the modern, luxury design hotel. In the bar area, in place of expensive design books neatly lined up on shelves, there are metal wire cages bursting at the seams with second hand travel guides and Seventies magazines. A frayed, patterned rug sits atop a polished concrete floor. The upholstery on the low slung sofas is slightly stained and already starting to wear away. Furnishings are an intriguing blend of flea-market finds and antique store pieces. Everything in the hotel, from the beds to the lights has been built, created or hand-picked especially for it. And this freewheeling mixing and matching of elements makes sense within the laidback, carefree atmosphere of Berlin.
As Tom Michelberger says, “Perfection does not create memories, because memories only result from movement, from a lively experience of interaction with people, the surroundings and the atmosphere.”

The hotel is housed within a former factory in the Friedrichshain district, by the Oberbaum bridge spanning the River Spree. The building is typical of its turn-of-the-last-century period – behind a clinker brick façade, a generous courtyard, high ceilings, stone archways, and large paned windows bring a sense of space and light to the industrial interiors.

The interiors did not originate so much from a singular vision imposed by Werner Aisslinger as through a collaboration between the group of characters involved in the hotel’s creation, all with different talents, each bringing their personal vision to the project. “My approach was to do a collage world, not a clean, designed world,” says Aisslinger.“It shouldn’t be something where everything is clean and perfect, but rather one with something family-like in it, a bit of chaos.

“It’s not so much ambitious architecture or interiors stuffed with details. Tom and his team wanted community at every level, not an anonymous place where you just check in.”

Stylists Anja Knauer and Sibylle Oellerich, with their background as set designers in the film world, have worked with Aisslinger to decorate rooms in a personal way that connects to the history of the city without relying on kitsch. “The thing people in East Berlin do now is to take old stuff, put it together and get something new”, says Knauer. Thus sugar bowls are mounted on the wall for use as towel racks, flower vases are transformed into soap dishes. “These elements have a story behind them”, says Knauer, “a connection to the past of this city. You typically see this around Berlin, but not in hotel rooms!”

“We just told ourselves: let’s build rooms that we would like to stay in,” adds Michelberger.  Werner Aisslinger has played with verticality and transparent surfaces: in basic rooms, king-sized beds on hand-made brushed and oiled larch wood platforms are flanked on both sides by glass – the glass-walled bathrooms on one side, the oversized, multi-paned windows on the other. A combination of muted grey walls and bright yellow curtains creates contrast.

Other features include custom lamps hanging by cords looped throughout the room and unique wallpaper by ad agency creative Azar Kazimir, which represents an eclectic mix of ideas, thoughts, and moments that inspired the team through the process of creating the hotel: hand-drawn old LP covers, second hand Mercedes, palm trees and Eighties computer consoles, all little things with personal meaning to the Michelberger Hotel team. The bedroom walls are also adorned with pictures from the personal family photo albums of the team.

This mélange of vintage and hand-crafted surfaces and spaces continues in the public areas. The reception desk, a circle-shaped island finished with overlapping wood slats, is situated in the middle of the bar and welcome area. The ground floor branches out from here in an easy flow, a series of highly textured spaces that retain a rough-around-the-edges patina. There are polished concrete floors, walls that still bear the marks of time, complemented by crowded bookshelves lining the walls with seating alcoves worked in between them. Oversized lampshades have been exclusively made by Werner Aisslinger for the hotel from old travel picture books from 60s, 70s, and 80s magazines, including a photo-spread of glamorously coiffeured, young Princess Di. On Sleeper’s visit in freezing early March the courtyard at the heart of the hotel was not being used. but you could imagine it coming to life in summer, with its greenhouse garden, trees and wooden platforms with garden swing seats, mini-huts and bars creating an adult playground.

Room types follow the communal, affordable ethos by altering the formula of single and double rooms to rooms categorised by their volume – 33m3, 55m3, or 88m3 – for different-sized groups, from one to four people. Some have twin beds on a mezzanine level, others are tailored for sharing with four single beds. One-off room types include ‘The Luxus’, with its gadgets and luxury touches such as a king-sized bed, and open wooden bathtub or ‘The Big One’, designed for “a travelling band or a professional team, a group of backpackers, whomever wants to sleep in a big group in the same room.”

The DIY ethos and imperfections of the Michelberger Hotel will not be to all tastes, but whatever guests make of it there is no doubt it has captured the hearts and minds of its local target adience – not least through a series of ad hoc warehouse parties which took place on-site during the construction of the hotel.

As Nadine May, another key member of the creative team, explains: “The local network we built through it is a big part of the hotel’s spirit. We live here, we love the city, and we want to have all these people around us, keeping it lively and local.”

Michelberger Hotel
Warschauerstr. 39-40
10243 Berlin
Germany
Tel: +49 (0)30 70243163-5
www.michelbergerhotel.com

Rooms 119 rooms
Dining Breakfast room / restaurant / Bar / Lounge
Facilities Courtyard, Conference room / backstage area, ‘Whisky Room’