One&Only - Cape Town

Cape Town’s Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, or V&A as it is known locally, is a shopping and entertainment hub said to be the country’s most visited tourist destination. For the man who created Atlantis in the Bahamas it must have held obvious appeal but was it right for a One&Only, Kerzner International’s boutique collection of ultra high-end resorts? More to the point, could the brand legitimately stretch across from its customary ‘private beach’ context into an urban harbour surrounded by residential apartments and shopping arcades?

One&Only weren’t alone in facing this kind of a challenge in an effort to increase their footprint. Aman Resorts have recently made the move into city central New Delhi and Shanghai but they went right back to the basics of their brand in the process, deciding which elements of the core philosophy must remain in place and which could be gently flexed in order to accommodate a change in context. Early signs are that they’ve been largely successful. So how did Kerzner’s brand manage?
“Look, in a certain sense we are still catering to leisure tourists, even though it’s a more urban setting than we’re used to. We’ve created two islands for ourselves in the site’s marina basin, one with a spa and another with villas, so in my view it’s now as close to being a resort as one could ever hope to find in a city centre,” says Kerzner, without batting an eyelid.

Mark Claymore, the Project Architect from local team Dennis Fabian Berman Architects and Ruben Reddy Architects, is equally comfortable discussing this dichotomy between the 91-key six-storey Marina Rise tower, and the 40-key all-suite island at the centre of the 23,675m2 plot.

“Residential in scale, the island clearly doesn’t have the spectacular mountain views of Marina Rise as it’s located within more of a built-up environment but that was a deliberate decision,” asserts Claymore. “We then brought in semi-tropical landscaping to add character to the buildings on the island and tucked the pool away in its centre to increase privacy levels”.

This outdoor component plays a fundamental role in justifying the ‘urban resort’ moniker One&Only’s prodigious PR machine has been throwing around since launch; although in reality, “without the nearby harbour, adjacent canal and of course the two new islands, it would essentially be more of a traditional hotel,” admits Claymore.

There is a further dichotomy at play here though, that between the hotel’s exterior and interior. The former was subject to strict guidelines courtesy of the V&A’s troubled owners Dubai World, who insisted the building sit harmoniously within its immediate surroundings. In other words, no modernist glass towers or Balinese style villa concepts.
There are few players in the hotel industry with the will or the wherewithal to tell Sol Kerzner what to do but Dubai World, aka His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum – the ruler of Dubai, is apparently one of them.

As a result, the eventual brief received by Claymore and his architectural team “didn’t ask for bold statements of design or excessive experimentation with new technologies,” but focused instead on “understated sophistication... simplicity and good design practice,” says Claymore. 

On the interiors side meanwhile, New York-based designer Adam D. Tihany was called in to take charge of both the public areas and bedrooms. Tihany has been known to let his hair down professionally in the past – just look at the quirky Hotel Aleph in Rome – yet he’s played it fairly safe here.

His intention was to avoid African pastiche while drawing inspiration from what he calls the “young, cosmopolitan and extremely sexy city” of Cape Town. “This wasn’t about creating an ‘African’ hotel but rather a hotel for Cape Town”, says Tihany with practiced precision.
The main hotel tower, Marina Rise, houses a dramatic lobby and bar area with a floor-to-ceiling glass wall maximising the views of Table Mountain. “The majesty of the mountain was something we really wanted to highlight” adds Claymore, “it’s one of the main things people come to Cape Town for and this site has a uniquely spectacular view of it”.

In a further effort to bring the outside in, Kerzner teamed up with Cape Town’s Goodman Gallery to commission a number of local artworks for the hotel’s communal areas, such as Norman Catherine’s twin ‘Day’ and ‘Night’ screens near the entrance hall, inspired by African mythologies. The Goodman team then took on a mezzanine space above the lobby as a platform for promoting their distinct vision of African art to hotel guests.

Facing each other off at opposite ends of the lobby meanwhile are two branded restaurant operations brought in to crank up the property’s international appeal, Nobu Matsuhita’s eponymous chain and Gordon Ramsay’s grazing concept, Maze.
The former is a double-height space dominated by a number of key design elements such as a translucent ‘origami’ light feature lit by amber and white LEDs, courtesy of MBLD – lighting designers for all of the hotel’s public areas. A palette of warm browns, creams and yellows is complemented by the MBLD lighting concept that helped re-create the chain’s typically sleek yet understated ambience.

Maze meanwhile has had to flex considerably from its original concept into what it hopes will be a twin role as both destination restaurant and the hotel’s F&B engine-room. Seating up to 170 covers at a time, a semi-open kitchen provides the obligatory ‘experiential’ element to the space while the real legwork goes on behind closed doors.

It’s the three-storey, 5000-bottle glass and steel ‘wine wall’ that really stands out here though, serving as a much needed focal point in what otherwise might have been a somewhat anonymous dining room dominated by muted greens, reds and browns.

Populating the four floors above are the Marina Rise bedrooms, all with balconies overlooking Table Mountain, and above that the sixth floor penthouses. The Presidential and Table Mountain suites meanwhile, both span more than 2,730ft2 and feature acres of African oak, ivory travertine marble and silk-screened frosted glass doors.

Outside on the Villa Island, guests access their rooms via a series of over-water bridges; in a neat twist, the back of house has been secreted underwater, ensuring staff can move to and fro without disturbing the tranquility of the island setting. Arguably, it’s only in crossing that first bridge in fact, that guests start to get a true sense of One&Only Cape Town’s lasting appeal.

A dedicated spa island signals the start of this transitional phase. A total of 12 treatment rooms, both male and female vitality pools, yoga pavilion and the immediately successful Pedi:Mani:Cure Studio by Bastien Gonzalez, make this the most impressive wellness offering in the Cape, if not South Africa.

Surrounding the free form, 350m2 infinity pool are the Island Junior Suites and expansive King and Double Villas. These open-plan interiors are flooded with natural light from both ends, offering verdant private island vistas from the bathtub and views of the well-tended canal from the bedside. In a crepuscular chiaroscuro light one morning, a guest might even, just for a moment, believe they’ve woken up on a remote tropical island…

Rooms  131 guestrooms & suites
Drinking  Nobu, Maze, Isola
Drinking  Wine Loft, Vista Bar
Leisure  Spa, Fitness Centre, Swimming Pool
facilities  Neo Boutique