Park Hotel

Rooms: 110 Location: The Park Kensington Terrace, 14/7, Mahatma Ghandi Road, Bangalore, India; Hotel Group: Apeejay Surrendra Group; Architect and design group: Conran & Partners

Park Hotel was built as a three-star hotel in the austere, white-painted style of Le Corbusier in 1987.

Conran & Partners’ design philosophy for the hotel reflects the vibrancy, craft and landscape of traditional India in the materials and colours used. However, the linear plan used for fittings, carpets and furniture also recognises the new, ‘Silicon Valley’ reputation of modern Bangalore.

The plan is a long rectangle with a bar, restaurant, screening room and library, shop, coffee shop and banqueting hall on the ground floor, and a terrace leading to the pool. The bedrooms occupy the top four floors; each floor has a different colour scheme.

The main lobby is a huge, sky-coloured curtained space with clusters of contemporary furniture.

The bar fuses the themes of technology and local craft and culture. Part of the floor is covered in a rich carpet, woven in the pattern of a silicon chip. The carpet rises halfway up one wall and has a row of TV screens set into it, near the top.

The Italian restaurant is simpler in design, relying on the contrast of neutral floors and walls with strongly coloured fabric upholstery for effect.

A leather-clad lift car takes guests up to neutrally decorated rooms with white plaster walls and American oak floors, offset by bright fabrics. The main features in each room are the four-poster, metal-framed bed and oak and leather desk.

Bathrooms are clad in white marble, and have a timber and marble washstand along one wall.