Boutique Design | boutiquedesign.com

Golden Opportunity: For Kimpton’s 50th hotel, the Eventi, designer Colum McCartan created a jewel-like cabinet of curiosities to surprise and delight.

By Jenny S. Reising

When designing the 57th hotel in your career, you could get lazy, rest on your laurels or even take liberties with the budget. Not Colum McCartan. In his interior design for the 22-floor Eventi hotel in a newly built, 54-story glass tower in New York’s Chelsea, McCartan left no detail unturned, ended the project with his tool belt on and came in $400,000 under a $9 million FF&E budget.

“I don’t want my approach to be complacent or overly theatrical,” says McCartan, an Irish native who moved to U.S. in the mid-1990s to start his eponymous design firm. “I thrive on the ‘smile factor,’ the sheer satisfaction I get from delighting people through interior environments.”

He’s also not one for big design statements. He’d rather engage people visually through multiple small details that spark curiosity. So, rather than approaching the hotel design as one single story, he created an anthology of short stories. As McCartan puts it, “From the moment you touch the door, everything you see and touch has its own storyline.”

Setting the Stage
Geared toward a mature business clientele—think 30s and up—Eventi has a refined design sensibility. In the lobby, the modest walnut front desk features mirrored panels that reflect the red-marbled floor and make the desk appear deeper than it is. A red curtain partially reveals a classical, circa-1900 painting by Thomas Benjamin Kenington called “Autumn” behind the desk, a slightly ajar curiosity cabinet invites visitors to sneak a peek and metal-wrapped concrete columns are peeled open to reveal fossilized plant life (a subtle reference to a nearby floral district). “We didn’t want to tell the story right away,” McCartan says. “We wanted people to experience a bit of theater.”

The design team maximized a compact lobby space by creating an eclectic seating arrangement for Kimpton’s signature “coffee mornings and wine afternoons.” McCartan custom-designed most of the furniture, including a ’30s-era etched-glass and walnut drinks cabinet, a coffee table with a built-in vase and deep seating arrangements in muted fabrics and rich leather.

Design in the Details
In true boutique hotel style, not all of the hotel’s 292 rooms and suites are generously sized, but they’re all generously detailed. “The rooms are tailored like a classic men’s suit; not a dandy, but a well-tailored person,” McCartan explains.