Mama Shelter Dijon opens doors
Mama Shelter has opened the doors to its Dijon property, housed in a historic brutalist building from the 1960s. The 120-room hotel finds home in the city’s former health insurance offices, with fresh life breathed in by Mama Shelter’s design team.
“This Mama is a spoiled child, playful, adorned with warm colours, terra cotta, powder pink and green,” explains Benjamin El Doghaïli, Lead Architect of the Mama Shelter design studio. “Each of its rooms and suites are distinguished, for the first time at Mama, by separate toilets, Tom Dixon basins, large showers and, in some cases, baths. Further details that affirm its personality include: a charming bench, a desk with a chessboard-shaped top that can be removed to play. But above all, they are flooded with natural light, generous, magical, which ennobles every corner, gives relief and depth, even to the concrete.”
He continues: “My aim was to capture the Burgundian landscape and invite it into the walls of Mama. To be inspired by the undulating vineyards, the geometric patterns of the polychrome glazed roof tiles, known as “toits vernissés” – or “glazed roofs”, which are the hallmark of this region. Tasting the wine, caressing the bottles to transcribe my emotions born of a terroir shaped by generations of craftsmen, growers, to humbly add my stone, that’s how I thought of this Mama with the help of revered artists and craftsmen.”
Aside from its guestrooms, the hotel comprises a 202-seat restaurant – which opens onto an outdoor veranda terrace and a planted patio – and a 28-seat cinema, two karaoke bars, four meeting rooms and a petanque court.
El Doghaïli has transformed each pillar in the lobby and restaurant, now decorated with frescoes by Beniloys, golden ceramics by Arnold du Bazar d’Alger, and cut-out silkscreens by Atelier Bingo. “We juggled again, on the one hand to avoid wandering around in a space that was too vast, we made the ceiling as dark as possible and put lights at eye level,” the architect explains. “Authentic grape harvest baskets were turned into light fittings and a monumental chandelier was hung with 136 pieces of enamelled ceramic reminiscent of traditional roofs, a unique object made by the Faïencerie de Charolles, a local company. In the lower part of the ceiling, a romantic score is played, with alcoves lined with Juliette Seban’s toile de Jouy, inspired by the paintings of Jérôme Bosch, gargantuan allegories.”
Cédric Gobilliard, Managing Director of Mama Shelter, comments on the opening: “Mama and Dijon share the same values of warm hospitality, festivity and enjoyment. Mama Dijon hijacks the strong symbols of this wine region with humour, impertinence and respect to reveal it to its French and foreign guests.”
