The Dolder, Bolder

Foster + Partners and United Designers perform a fairy-tale transformation on Zurich's Dolder Grand

Craig Kellogg -- Interior Design, 6/1/2008 2:00:00 AM

"Did you notice the gnomes?" Stefan Behling inquires. It had been generations, the architect points out, since guests entered Zurich's Dolder Grand hotel through the front door—under the watch of squat, stony, proto-Disney-esque Swiss characters that still, a century on, appear to strain at propping up the building's facade. Previously, a restaurant addition had been blocking the way, and arrivals were funneled through a back entrance accessorized with what Behling, a senior partner at Foster + Partners, calls a "horrible canopy and funny potted plants." Now, excavations have permitted a generous passenger drop-off lane for the original front door, plus a new casual restaurant and function rooms beneath the driveway. The restoration also created an opportunity for a new flared canopy in a striking red.

With one black Mercedes-Benz after another pulling up, it's almost impossible to remember that the building actually began as a rather sensible suburban kurhaus, or health retreat, built for locals in 1899. "I'm not saying hospital, but there weren't grand rooms," Behling explains. A faded period photograph shows the central hall cluttered with Asian-inflected fan-backed rattan chairs and not so much as a proper chandelier above. "You can imagine some bourgeois writer sitting there all day with his love letters," he continues almost wistfully. Today's chandelier positively drips with crystals.

The opulence continues in Foster's two wings, which confidently wrap the shoulders of the original, historic building like a shawl. At the mere suggestion of sun, awnings automatically unfurl to shade wide sliding glass doors. Some of the glass is also screened by perforated aluminum panels installed in front. Water-jet cutters ran practically nonstop for the better part of a year to remove 40 percent of the metal in those panels, and their digitally abstracted tree pattern derives from snapshots taken in the surrounding forest. Similar panels appear as balustrades.

Foster's office provided general interior layouts throughout and got as far as a mock-up of the aluminum facade for model rooms, set up at a site down the road. Then the owner, London-based Swiss financier Urs Schwarzenbach, switched gears and charged three additional firms with the interiors. FSI Design handled a pair of neo-postmodern libraries on the lobby level. Sylvia Planning and Design's Sylvia Sepielli took on the spa level, perhaps most remarkable for its inky-black swimming pool lined in glass mosaic tiles. She also pushed for the Snowparadise, which amounts to a small refrigerated room with ice-slicked faux-stone walls. Think of it as an anti-sauna for exercising your pores.

All the rest, from the ballroom to a themed suite, proved the project "of a lifetime" for United Designers, founder Keith Hobbs says of the $400 million restoration and expansion. Although the square footage has roughly doubled, to 463,000, the key count remains roughly the same, at just 173.

In both wings, Hobbs used oiled, brushed oak for bedroom flooring and lavish dark, iridescent granite for bathrooms. Desks are oak with chrome, and lounge seating is covered in winter-white leather. A dip into the archives at De Sede, which made that seating, happened to reveal an unusual sofa commissioned by Dolder guest Mick Jagger—ideal when upholstered in shocking pink for the rock-and-roll decor of suite 100.

Strict modernism or even minimalism was never the goal. So, in the historic part of the hotel, there was no conceptual problem with using vintage wallpaper and preserving painted ceilings. When rustic murals were uncovered above the false ceilings in two public rooms, slated to become a lobby lounge and fine dining, Hobbs negotiated with a design-review board of locals assembled by the owner. "We were dealing with the Swiss, who are a unique race," he says. "There was nothing free and easy about it."

Perhaps it was the sheer scale of construction that ultimately convinced everyone to play along. "Their comments as amateur interior decorators weren't really. . .appropriate," Hobbs adds with a barely detectable note of British triumph. There will always be an England.

Previous spread: Zurich's Dolder Grand hotel, built in 1899 and renovated and expanded by Foster + Partners and United Designers, now has two wings with automatically retracting sunshades.

Top: Computer-controlled LEDs cause the fabric stretched across the ballroom's 36-foot ceiling to change color. Photography: courtesy of the Dolder Grand. Center: The front of the reception desk is book-matched onyx. Bottom: Artificial candles fitted with crystal "flames" are suspended in the bar. Photography: courtesy of the Dolder Grand.

Opposite: A custom crystal chandelier crowns the terrazzo-floored great hall. Photography: courtesy of the Dolder Grand.

Opposite: Ceiling murals were rediscovered during the renovation of the lobby lounge.

Left, from top: A new canopy shelters the original front entry, in use again after eight decades. Verner Panton's chairs and pendant fixture and Eero Saarinen's table cluster in the center of a suite. Right: In the spa café, Norman Cherner's chairs accompany a custom wall covering printed with blow-ups of Swiss flowers.

Top: A guest bathroom's enameled steel tub sits on polished granite flooring. Center: Photos of the surrounding forest inspired the perforated aluminum panels installed to screen windows in the connectors between the new wings and the historic building. Bottom: In a suite, walnut chairs gather around a fireplace by Dominique Imbert. Photography: courtesy of the Dolder Grand.

Top: Leather-covered chairs, reproductions of a 1919 design, furnish the upper level of the Maestro suite, named for former guest Herbert von Karajan. Bottom, from left: The upper level was formerly outdoor space just beneath a tower's roof. It's topped by a pinnacle.

Top: A spa treatment room's sheers veil a masonry wall in which missing blocks create windows. Photography: courtesy of the Dolder Grand. Bottom, from left: Paola Lenti's chaise longues line the swimming pool, clad in glass mosaic tile. The spa's steam and hydrotherapy area is part of the aqua zone; photography: courtesy of the Dolder Grand.

PROJECT TEAM NIKOLAI MALSCH; JOE KAPS; HENRIETTE HAHNLOSER; STEPHAN SCHAEFER; DANIEL BAUKUS; CARSTEN MUNDLE: FOSTER + PARTNERS. IAN BAYLISS; STEPHEN CRAWLEY; LUCY SOUTHALL; FRAUKE LARSSON: UNITED DESIGNERS. ITTEN + BRECHBÜHL: ARCHITECT OF RECORD. SPIERS & MAJOR ASSOCIATES: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. EMMER PFENNINGER PARTNER: FACADE RESTORATION CONSULTANT. VETSCH NIPKOW PARTNER: LANDSCAPING CONSULTANT. PROMAFOX: HOTEL OPERATIONS CONSULTANT. ERNST BASLER + PARTNER; DSP; WERNER SOBEK STUTTGART: STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS. SCHMIDT REUTER PARTNER: MEP. FRENER & REIFER METALLBAU: METALWORK. KÄMPFER + CO.: WOODWORK. MARTI, ZSCHOKKE: GENERAL CONTRACTORS. PRODUCT SOURCES FROM FRONT ANDREU WORLD: CUSTOM CHAIRS (BALLROOM). DOTZAUER MANUFACTURING: CUSTOM SCONCES (BALLROOM, LOBBY), CUSTOM CHANDELIER (LOBBY), CUSTOM DRUM FIXTURE (SUITE). JOHN HUTTON: STOOLS (BAR). DONGHIA: CHAIRS. FLEXFORM: TABLE. SWAROVSKI: PENDANT CRYSTALS (BAR), CHANDELIER CRYSTALS (LOBBY). MODE NATURE: LAMPS (LOBBY). WALO BERTSCHINGER: FLOOR INSTALLATION. WITTMANN: SOFAS. ANDREW MUIRHEAD: SOFA UPHOLSTERY (LOBBY), PINK SOFA UPHOLSTERY (SUITE). PRANDINA: LAMPS (LOUNGE). POLTRONA FRAU: CLUB CHAIRS (LOUNGE, SUITE). VITRA: PLASTIC CHAIRS (SUITE). KNOLL: PEDESTAL TABLE. VERPAN: PENDANT GLOBE. LIGNE ROSET: RED SOFA. KVADRAT: RED SOFA FABRIC. MISSONI: PILLOWS. DE SEDE: PINK, BEIGE SOFAS (SUITES). LOOPHOUSE: CUSTOM RUGS. CHERNER CHAIR COMPANY: CHAIRS (CAFÉ). PLANK: TABLES. KALDEWEI: TUB (BATHROOM). CECCOTTI: WALNUT CHAIRS (SUITE). FOCUS: FIREPLACE. FLOS: COLUMN LAMP. JORDING MEISTERWERKSTÄTEN: CUSTOM CURTAINS. PORTA ROMANA: FLOOR LAMPS. HBF: TABLES. CARL HANSEN: CHAIR (TREATMENT ROOM). PAOLA LENTI: CHAISES (POOL). ADC DOMMEL INTERNATIONAL: TILE (HYDROTHERAPY).