We're accustomed to glamour in London SE26: Kelly Brook and Jason Statham used to live above the dentist. But when Anouska Hempel's heels hit the cracked cement of the parking space outside my flat, it's hard not to think of those Picture Post photographs of royalty visiting bombed-out families during the second world war. Her mission in my modest tract of suburbia is, however, about more than offering sympathy. Hempel—the woman who invented the boutique hotel before it bore any such proprietary name—has come to give me information for which, judging by the spreads in interiors magazines and anxious postings on online DIY forums, half the property-owners in the Western world seem desperate: how to give an ordinary home the look and the vibe of a five-star, £750-a-night hotel suite. To Hempelise, in this case, a modest conversion flat formed from the middle slice of a three-storey Victorian semi.
"You could do it," she says, casting an eye around my kitchen. "Anyone could do it. Absolutely no reason why not. But there has to be continuity between the rooms. A single idea must be followed through." She looks out wistfully over the fire escape. "And you'd have to buy the house next door, of course." That's a joke. I think.
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It's worth pausing, though, to consider the oddness of this impulse. The hotel room is an amnesiac space. We would be troubled if it bore any sign of a previous occupant, particularly as many of us go to hotels in order to do things we would not do at home. We expect a hotel room to be cleaned as thoroughly as if a corpse had just been hauled from the bed. (In some cases, this will actually have happened.) The domestic interior embodies the opposite idea: it is a repository of memories. The story of its inhabitants ought to be there in the photos on the mantelpiece, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves. If hotel rooms were people, they would be smiling lobotomy patients or plausible psychopaths. | 我们都知晓伦敦 SE26 区的迷人所在:凯莉•布鲁克和杰森•斯坦森过去居住的地方,楼下就是牙科诊所。不过,当安诺斯佳•亨佩尔踢开碎裂的水泥渣从我公寓外的停车场迤逦走来,很难不让我想起《图片邮报》照片上,英国皇室慰问二战硝烟下无家可归的人们的情景。不过,她光临我位于郊外的这个方寸之地,绝非只是出于“慰问”。亨佩尔就是“精品酒店”的创造者,当然,那个时候还没有这样的专门叫法。她来这里,是要给我提一些建议:如何让普通家居呈现750英镑一夜的五星级酒店套房般的观感和体验。从家居装修杂志上的流行文章和DIY论坛上求知若渴的帖子不难判断,亨佩尔的建议,是伦敦西部半数像我这样的业主梦寐以求的真知灼见。就我的装修而言,要做的就是如何使这个由三层英式半独立洋房的中层改造而成的普通公寓贴上亨佩尔的标签。 “你这个没问题“,她环视了一下我的厨房,脱口说道。“这没什么难的,谁都能做到。不过要注意的是,屋子之间在风格上要保持连贯性。你的设计理念要贯穿始终。”然后,她不无遗憾地望了望防火梯,悠悠地说:“当然,你得把隔壁的房子买下来。”我想,她是在开玩笑。 ... 不过,这种冲动背后的奇怪之处,值得我们思索。酒店房间本应是一个不留痕迹的地方。如果房间留有前面入住者的“蛛丝马迹”,会让后来者感到不舒服,更何况我们中很多人去酒店,是为了做一些不方便在家里做的事。我们希望酒店房间经过彻底清洁,就像将死尸从床上拖走一样不留痕迹(有时,还真会发生这样的事情)。而家装设计人员践行的理念恰好相反:让房间变成一个留存各种记忆的博物馆。房间的陈设布置要体现居住者的身份和经历,包括壁炉架上的相片,墙上张贴的图片,还有架子上摆放的书刊。如果将酒店房间比做人的话,他就应是一个做过脑叶白质切除术且微笑着的病人,或者说是一个疑似精神变态者,对过去和周围环境浑然不知。
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