Puro Hotels announces Warsaw opening
Puro Hotels’ first Warsaw property is located in the heart of the capital city, sitting next to a signature Los Angeles-designed street mural and the grand socialist Palace of Culture & Science. Housed inside a distinct glass-panelled building designed by JEMS Architekci – forming a dynamic bridge between the downtown district’s traditional tenement houses and emergent modern high-rises – the hotel combines minimalist modernism with custom statement pieces. Puro Warsaw’s visual art collection brings together key artists from the region to showcase the past, present and future of the city, while the culinary offering comes courtesy of an independent Italian restaurant that thrives among Warsaw’s food community. The in-house spa, rooftop terrace bar and programme of urban culture collaborations further offer a stimulating selection of activities inside the hotel.
Puro once again collaborated with London-based studio DeSallesFlint on the interior design scheme, which much like Warsaw’s own design legacy, evokes a sense of vintage finesse alongside contemporary simplicity. Each of the 148 guestrooms – including six corner suites and two executive apartments – are fitted with hand-tufted rugs from Golran 1898 and speakers from Bang & Olufsen, while finishing touches include a collection of bold European furniture from Baxter, Moroso, Kettal, Carl Hansen & Son, &Tradition, Gubi, Fredericia and Fogia.
Elsewhere, Mia Hamborg’s Shuffle tables and Lorenza Bozzoli’s poufs are offset by the sleek functionality of a series of totem coffee tables from Sovet. A mixture of boucle wools, velvets and nubuck suede gives the upholstered pieces a luxurious tactility, while the open wardrobe design nods to the ‘travelling trunk’. Black-and-white tones blend alongside green accents to reference both the city’s ever-evolving urbanism and its creative vibrancy, while a custom set of natural vegan cosmetics from Poland’s holistic health specialists Alba1913 are available in all guestrooms, as well as in the Prisma Spa.
Amid its pre-war courtyards, communist-era residential blocks and contemporary commercial buildings, the landscape of Warsaw tells the story of a unique architectural heritage. Part of this story is encapsulated in the rooftop Loreta bar through a series of photographs from Nicolas Grospierre’s Kolorobloki, foregrounding the colourful modularity of modernist blocks from 1960s and 1970s Warsaw. Likewise, the surrealist BBAAARRmetalwork installation from Tomasz Kowalski floats between interwar class and provincial eccentricity in its depiction of an imaginary anachronistic bar. Among Puro Warsaw’s public-space visual art collection are two photographs from Paweł Fabjański’s Autofirecycle, which explore the intersection of human needs and urban psychology. The hotel’s collection continues in each guestroom, with a curation of commissions from two local artists: Tymek Jezierski contributes a set of illustrations presenting the intellectual allure of Warsaw to creative western minds such as David Bowie, Pablo Picasso and Michel Foucault; while Michał Loba’s minimalist sketches delicately portray feminine figures, while simultaneously making subtle allusions to the city.
Puro Warsaw is also home to another distinct eatery in the form of Magari. The ground-floor Italian restaurant sources handpicked meat, cheese and vegetables from Italian and Polish markets to create a laidback, rustic dining experience. The rooftop Loreta cocktail bar looks out across the downtown district’s post-war modernist skyline and – in a nod to Warsaw’s once ubiquitous neon cityscape – features the pink Warszawianka (Warsaw Girl), neon installation designed by Maurycy Gomulicki.
