Eurostars Book Hotel | Capella García Arquitectura

The Book Hotel, as its name suggests, is inspired by the pages of a book. The facade is made up of white leaves that shelter the windows of the bedrooms. Altogether it suggests a disordered but harmonious fluttering of blank pages. Like riffling through the pages of a book with your thumb. A classic but organic composition, suited to the rhythm of the street where it stands, and yet standing out because of its chromatic purity and the kinetic effect conferred by the curved lintels of the openings. The rays of the sun throw shadows that progressively mark out the always changing cut-out volume of the building. As in a book, the hotel’s formal calligraphy is in “black on white”, plus several shades of grey, that reinforce the leitmotiv of writing. Both the exterior and the interior play mainly on this austere bitonality.

On the exterior, the elegant volumetrics of this L-shaped building are organised according to classical architectural practice, being divided into a plinth, central body and cornice. The plinth is formed by the ground floor and the cornice by the top floor of the building, which are both black in colour, and are thus differentiated tonally from the white central body, constructed using the revolutionary material FiberC, concrete reinforced with glass fibre, which had never before been used with such curvatures. The central body, which contains the bedrooms, is distinguished by striking projecting features by way of awnings, that resemble the pages of a book. The non-aligned arrangement of the awnings gives the facade considerable dynamism.

Access to the interior of the Hotel is on the corner of the building, through a wide double-height space that houses the lobby, reception and bar. Other facilities such as the restaurant and the meeting rooms are on the ground floor, distributed around the rear courtyard.

The welcoming interior design of the common areas is based on the contrast between black and white, with a few touches of lilac. They contain a series of backlit elements, such as the reception desk, the bar counter and the restaurant buffet. Various informal armchairs and lamps bring a sense of comfort. An enormous open book over the reception desk gives arrivals a literal, literary welcome.

The interior design pays special attention to circulation within the Hotel, based on the vertical core with stairs and lifts in the angle of the building. Sequences of bi-tonal stripes, resembling linear bar-codes, make up the flooring. The low-key passageways, flanked by white linear flashes along the dark walls, accompany the guest to the illuminated “open books”, made up of a pair of adjacent entrances to bedrooms. Also, the walls of the passageways are decorated with texts of seven different literary genres, an identifying characteristic for each of the seven floors of the hotel.

The rooms are neat and welcoming, using warm, luminous materials, and are arranged in a way that optimises the space and endows it with a feeling of calm, bathed always by generous daylight that steals into the bathroom through a translucent screen. Over each bed can be read some quotation from great works of world literature. There are also eight suites, located just in the corner of the hotel and at the two ends, with their own day-rooms and large bathrooms.

Eurostars Book Hotel stands on the corner of a street in central Munich, one of the main thoroughfares of the historic centre of the city around the Marienplatz, close to the central rail station. It is also close to the Theresienwiese, an area where many outdoor events take place, such as the world-famous annual Oktoberfest.

Architecture: Capella García Arquitectura and SchmidArchitekten (until construction-licence project: NSP, Neumeyer Scmid Plan)
Interior design: Capella García Arquitectura
Architects: Juli Capella, Miquel García, Alfred Schmid
Architect responsible for project management: Pamela Könsgen
Architects responsible for interior design: Pamela Könsgen, Lorelay Gazo
Works management: Capella García Arquitectura S.L.P., SchmidArchitekten
Structural calculation: IPB Ingenieurplanung Bergmaier, Dierk Bergmaier
(until construction-licence project: EISENHUT STATIK GmbH, Thomas Krösche)
Engineering: EPM GmbH, Ralf Reinecke and Martin Weber
(until construction-licence project: ING. WOLFGANG SPIEGL GmbH, Wolfgang Spiegl)
Fire-protection engineering: BS.M, Joachim Müller
(until construction-licence project: HENKE + RAPOLDER mbH, Joachim Müller)
Thermal/acoustic engineering: IfaB, Hans-Ullrich Telloke
Geotechnical engineer: GRUNDBAULABOR MÜNCHEN, Herr Huber
Topographer: INGENIEUR BÜRO SITTENAUER, Jakob Sittenauer