A black and white palette

Morgans Hotel Group reveals Andree Putman's restoration of Morgans

Twenty-five years after Andree Putman designed her dynamic black and white contemporary interior for the opening of New York's Morgans Hotel and 13 years after her 1996 update of that project, her love story with Morgans continues with an exciting third interior design. Putman has seamlessly moved Morgans fashion and design forward without changing its unique character. "Who in the world would have guessed that I knew there was something missing: a warmth, a spirit that had to be revised," she says of her design. "There are a few beautiful details I want to add to the piece, so it's being done, but as if it had always been there."

When Morgans opened on Madison Avenue and 37th Street in 1984, Putman revolutionised the role of design in the New York hotel industry with a look that was modern and chic but at the same time unpretentious. The Morgans experience was new: balancing a casual ambience with an emphasis on exceptional service in the tradition of the world's great hotels. In Putman's new design for Morgans, she retains the freshness of her original monochromatic black and white palette but reinterprets it with rich gradations of white, grey and black tones. This palette is repeated in the details of each guest room from grey slip-covered headboards to original black and white photographs of the famous contemporary photographer, the late Robert Mapplethorpe.

"To have interiors crafted by the indisputable talent of Andree Putman three times makes Morgans one of the most covetable and remarkable of hotels currently operating in the marketplace, and we are so excited and proud to have the hotel's rebirth happen during the company's 25th anniversary year," said Fred Kleisner, CEO of Morgans Hotel Group. "Morgans represents for us the first and the most audacious hotel in our portfolio - this is the property that introduced the concept of the 'boutique hotel' to the world of hospitality. With an inimitable re-design that looks forward to a bold new future whilst respecting the past, Morgans is for us a wonderful emblem of Morgans Hotel Group's company philosophy of free-thinking -- one that has afforded us a truly unique and privileged position amongst our peers."

Signature Morgans' design elements such as guestroom alcoves overlooking city views have been retained. New design additions include an art installation, commissioned by Putman, created by the French design collective Trafik, and installed on the lobby ceiling behind a stretched white barisol canvas. The programming changes, but the aesthetic emulates the classic grid-like pattern of the M C Escher-style carpet, and re-articulating the iconic palette of black, white, and grey. During the day, the programming is autonomous, the ceiling displaying random combinations of patterns and colours. In the evening, hotel guests select a motif and color by pushing a simple button; each specific pattern remains the guest's signature, a trace of their stay, a sign that can be activated through the internet from anywhere in the world once it has been introduced.

Armchairs and foldable lacquered tables by the 1930's designer Jean-Michel Frank, a favourite of Putman's, accent the lobby, while the elevator and corridors offer another moment of quiet ambience with soft lighting elements that give a rhythm to the space, a move that the designer describes as being "like the streetlights in a Scorsese movie".

Elegantly unfussy, the rooms are designed for ultimate comfort: the grey-tone carpeting giving first indication that guests are entering a space of shelter, the signature Morgans alcove framing the city and giving guests a space to curl up and breathe on a sofa that looks like a twirling ribbon. Keeping the rooms' architectural characteristics intact and changing only the color scheme and the furnishings, Putman has introduced a series of objects - an armchair upholstered in wool and detailed with stitches evoking a bespoke suit, a metal-inlaid Corian table, and La Notte bedside lamps in a tribute to Antonioni -- that speak to the sophisticated yet understated luxury of the hotel. The walls are now bathed in a titanium coloured paint, and Putman has created a new lacquered aluminum chair, produced by Emeco, that operates as, she says, "the soul mate" of the Mallet-Stevens chair that originally made the Morgans its home.

The bathrooms, a signature design feature of Morgans, retain their strong, visual identity and update their striking black-and-white checkered pattern, combining the evocation of the 1930s and the digital age, referencing oversized pixels. In the style of Andree Putman, every detail of the new Morgans strikes the balance between history and modernity.

For the penthouse, Putman kept the original spirit intact but ensured contemporary flexibility through the playfulness of the furniture. Putman's sofa, Pillow Fight, is modular and adaptable, and small pieces by Bourroulec and Marcel Wanders complete the look. A black light suspension by Serge Mouille greets guests when they first walk in, as does a working space furnished with a desk, a light grey leather-covered armchair whose colour picks up the room's warm grey palette, and a lamp, Compas dans l'Oeil, designed by Putman.

The table, Tribute to Jean-Pierre Raynaud, echoes the iconic Morgans bathroom with its black and white tiles, a pattern reiterated in the cloud-like randomly-assembled grey-square carpet, and combines the hotel's history and the present in one stunning object.