O
pening the door to the Cooper Square Hotel looks difficult. Not because one has any reservation whatsoever about seeing what’s inside – but because the door itself is colossal. Yet what the wood and metal studded door wears in grandeur it lacks in awkwardness, for it gently swings open with finesse as if it were feather-light.
Conceived by Antonio Citterio and created by B&B Italia, this door is just one of the many touches throughout the property that demonstrates an exacting design vision. But Citterio was not the only mastermind behind the project; his friend Klaus Ortlieb, owner of KO Hospitality Management and a partner at MK Hotels, (the company that manages the property) is the on-the-ground man who makes sure the hotel is living up to the reputation that was built for it before that towering door ever opened (officially to guests in March).
“We always wanted it to be warm, timeless, comfortable and homey,” said Ortlieb. “The concept behind the hotel is that it’s like you’re coming into somebody’s house.”
While the architecture, conceived by renowned architect Carlos Zapata, looks nothing like a house, the lobby and library – sans reception desk – create a cozy atmosphere that starkly contrasts its glass and steel exterior, a looming metallic façade that one New York Magazine blogger called “Dubai on the Bowery.” Resistors to the property balked at the structure for a seemingly bloated modernity that isn’t common in the Lower East Side (LES) of Manhattan, a neighborhood accustomed to far shorter, less obtrusive buildings that exemplify the crux of NYC’s grit.
But the Cooper Square is not quite in the LES – it stands at the convergence of some of the city’s trendiest neighborhoods: Greenwich Village, NoHo, Nolita, the LES and the East Village. Its proximity to such culturally-enriched ‘hoods, coupled with a renaissance of attention being paid to the Bowery, have made this spot between 5th and 6th streets as good as any for the Cooper Square – glitz, glam and all.
As described by Ortlieb, the building’s appearance is far less audacious than what a hasty glance at its exterior might incite. Looking more closely at its outside and its even softer inside allows for a better understanding of the subtleties that the 21-story, 145-room hotel was engineered to project.
“The design of the building is like a face,” said Ortlieb. “It goes from the neck up, then it gets wide, then it’s narrowed. The challenge was to furnish the rooms because some of them have such strange angles because of this shape of the building.”
The strangely-angled structure manages to make the best of its irregularly-shaped rooms through an ingenious use of furnishings, almost all designed by Citterio and – like the main entry door – fabricated by B&B Italia.
“He paid a lot of attention to the bathroom,” Ortlieb said of Citterio’s room designs for Cooper Square.
“In some rooms they’re almost as big as the whole room. Most of your time in the hotel room you either sleep, or you are in the bathroom, especially in New York City.” Due to this surefire truth, Citterio (with the help of Ortlieb, for the two consulted each other on many of the design choices) gave special consideration to the details that guests do pay attention to in the short time they spend in their rooms such as: bathrobes – guests at the Cooper Square have a choice of three; hair dryers – they’re ensconced in a silken casing to detract from their inherent clash with high design interiors; makeup – guests can grab a Loraine kit from the mini-bar if airport security nicked theirs; and bedding – all high-end Anichini linens.
Ortlieb and Citterio want their guests to feel at home during every moment they spend within the hotel’s walls and behind that impressive front door.
“Comfort is the most important thing in this hotel,” said Ortlieb. “We sat on 40 chairs before we picked a desk chair. That’s why at the end of the day, you have to have a balance between the interior designer and the operator. You have to be able to function in a room.”