RCA students put on hotel show

Students in the Royal College of Art’s design products department are contributing to an exhibition about the Great Eastern Hotel, with individual interpretations of the hotel expressed through reactive installations and objects.

A collaboration between the hotel and 14 students, the Sleepless exhibition will invite guests and visitors to take part in an interactive experience and step into a ‘hidden dimension where the hotel is more than just a place to stay for the night’. It takes place at the hotel in London’s Liverpool Street from 19 May to 3 June.

Exhibits include a ‘playful curtain’ which suggests something might be going on behind it and an adapted Victorian chair that pays homage to the history of the hotel as the site of Bedlam, London’s first asylum for the clinically insane.

Additionally, there will be a ‘dream service’, where guests can choose from a menu of specific cheeses that stimulate certain types of dreams, as well as bedtime stories written on blankets, and reactive lighting for entertaining guests in the waiting areas.

The students are part of Platform 10, one of six teaching units within the design products department run by designers Roberto Feo and Daniel Charny.