“Simply put, there is nothing similar,” says Arne Sorenson, President and CEO Marriott International, the multinational with which the inventor of the boutique hotel Ian Schrager has racked up another match point in the expansion of his EDITION Hotel chain.
Perfectly inserted in New York City’s iconic Theater District, which has had its ups and downs over time, welcoming personalities like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, immortalized in a symbol-photo by Eisenstaedt at the end of World War II, The Times Square EDITION hotel pays tribute to a glorious past with utterly original forms and manners. Unique character is a second skin for Schrager, who never forgets his past as co-owner and co-founder of the famous Studio 54, the New York club that rode the provocative wave of the 1970s and 1980s.
Eccentricity, of course, but of the kind that makes good business sense, as always. The Times Square EDITION hotel is not just a hospitality facility sumptuously designed in its interiors by Yabu Pushelberg and ISC Design Studio, but also a place of entertainment, an open stage for theater and the performing arts, including dance, song, acrobatics…
The Paradise Club, or the artistic production springing from an idea of the artists of House of Yes – Anya Sapozhnikova, Justin Conte, Matthew Dailey and Kae Burke – also covers a new form of cabaret revisited in a modern key, a manifestation of the disorder and chaos of the city, which adds a new dimension to the hotel and to Times Square itself.
The interiors speak the same dreamy, theatrical language. As soon as you cross the threshold of the hotel at 20 Times Square, on West 47th Street, you are sucked into another dimension, a decompression chamber with respect to what exists outside: a long ivory room with walls and ceiling in Venetian stucco and a floating sphere of mirror-finish green steel, inspired by Anish Kapoor and the colors of Jeff Koons.
The interior design by Yabu Pushelberg and ISC Design Studio intentionally plays with extremes and the contrast of different worlds, each autonomous and at the same time necessary to all the others. A set that conveys a sensation of boundless space. Colors and materials form the fulcrum, of forceful impact in the common areas, and in quieter shades of pale in the private zones. Pitch black and white dominate in the lobby and the lobby bar.
The elegance of fine wood, velvet, leather, polished marble and brushed metals in the areas for socializing are nimbly countered by simple materials and totally neutral nuances of white and beige in the guestrooms.
The connector is the green hue of the vegetation that flourishes on the roof, the location of the Terrace Restaurant (with a space for photography exhibitions) and in the internal and outdoor gardens: a major landscaping project by Madison Cox, on multiple levels, with thousands of plants and trees.
Ian Schrager comments: “The golden age of Times Square made people think that anything was possible. New York was the city of dreams. Times Square EDITION is the incarnation of this historical past, revived for the present, with the aim of bringing hope for the future of this much-loved neighborhood.”
