FRESH HOTEL | Zege Architects

The aptly named Fresh Hotel, opened up in Athens in the summer of 2004, adds a candy box kaleidoscope of colour to an emergent industrial quarter – deliciously designed by Tassos Zeppos, Eleni Georgiadi and their associates. The Fresh boldly mixes rich natural materials, like oak and walnut, with bright pinks and oranges, making it a clean-lined sanctuary from the flurry of downtown Athens just outside its doors. The nine-storey building, with a pool and bar sporting a view of the Acropolis on the top floor, welcomes its guests into a lobby extending over two floors that gives you a taste of the funkiness to come upstairs. A generous fireplace that is surrounded by an imposing black wall stands opposite the reception created by an attractive pink glass box. The 133 guestrooms, six of them with private, small Zen gardens, are temples to clean lines with sleek, modernist spaces broken up by bright slashes of orange, pink and green. Furniture and fittings including Tolomeo lamps by Artemide, Starck’s transparent polycarbonate Eros chairs by Kartell and Urquiola’s Lens tables by B&B Italia are offset against other light oak pieces. The distinct look of the bathrooms, with brightly coloured light boxes behind the shower and translucent screens for the shower itself, is completed by multicoloured tile flooring. The hotel was created in less than a year by ripping an old hotel down to its foundations and infusing Zeppos and Georgiadi’s eye-catching design.