When moderating a panel discussion during the Best of Interior Awards a few weeks ago in Munich, Germany, I was asking Viki Kitzig from the architecture bureau Kitzig how hotel design has changed. Her answer was that a hotel has to take over the role of a home when away from home nowadays. Independent French hotelier Adrien Gloaguen couldn’t agree more insisting on how important it is today a clients feels ‘welcomed’ as if the hotel was its own home. But his philosophy goes beyond wanting to offer well decorated hotels with an affordable price. The name of his last adventure in the Paris 9th district says it all. After Hotel Panache and Hotel Paradis he has now opened his third hotel Hotel Bienvenue Paris commissioned to Studio Chloe Nègre renovating and reinterpreting a hotel that already existed on the rue Buffalo.

Paris seems to become the capital of the last trending small hotels Paris managed by independent hoteliers, and this is a fresh breeze compared to the copy/paste concepts offered by many chains.Renown retail structures, even in the luxury area, are designing individual concepts in their stores, this is the trend to go which will eventually spread to other areas as well. Think bank offices, restaurants, coffee shops (Starbucks started this some time ago already).The end consumer wants to heard as an individual person and so need architecture proposals to adapt.