07/22/2022
"Wassily Kandinsky's abstract paintings influenced the colourful yet understated interiors that design studio Holloway Li has created inside the Locke hotel in Munich.
The aparthotel, called Wunderlocke, contains 360 serviced studio apartments and is situated in Munich's Obersendling district, taking over an office building that previously belonged to German tech company Siemens. London-based Holloway Li aimed to celebrate the building's raw structure and reveal its 'inner voice', avoiding a more traditional 'material intensive' approach to retrofitting.
This decision was chiefly informed by the work of 20th-century Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky – a pioneer of abstract art who spent a significant portion of his career in Munich.'Kandinsky's work explores how we can develop a closer relationship to nature through abstraction, rather than through more figurative approaches favoured at the time,' explained Holloway Li.
'He believed that by connecting with the 'innerer klang' (inner voice) of things, an artist could reveal the natural essence of objects and materials.' In line with this idea, the studio stripped back the building to its concrete shell and added a carefully curated selection of furnishings using natural colours and materials where possible.
At the heart of the ground-floor reception is a curved timber desk inset with panels of wheat-coloured carpet, which were also used to wrap the lower half of the room's structural columns." - Read full article by Natasha Levy on | photography is by