The Dean: Berlin’s new bolthole

London-based interior designer Rachael Gowdridge was invited to design The Dean, a new hotel in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district. The grand, 19th-century building has many past lives: homes, offices, even another hotel. As a result, the building has a few quirks. “We had to work with its intricacies,” Gowdridge says.

She used colour and pattern to bold effect, and retained as many original details as possible. Behind the reception desk, a wall is stripped to plaster. The glass-fronted counter, a remnant from the old hotel, is filled with plants and sculptures. “The joinery was so beautiful,” she says. “We had to keep it.”

During the design process, Gowdridge strolled through the colourful neighbourhood, which inspired the guestrooms’ chromatic contrast: red and green mirrors offset original black-and-white tiled floors. Ceiling lights are made with latex – a nod, Gowdrige says, to “the nocturnal side of Berlin.”

thedeanhotels.com

Photographs by Dean Hearne