Renaissance Hotels Wants to Un-Disney New York’s Times Square
Photo Credit: The new design in the Living Room lounge is more minimalist to counteract the maximalist views of Times Square. Renaissance Hotels
Skift Take
Legacy hotel brands like Renaissance Hotels are adopting the same design strategies as their lifestyle brand counterparts to spark guest interaction among creative professionals.
When the Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel wanted to rework the public spaces and convert one floor of meeting spaces to luxury suites with balconies, they turned to local interior designer Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, principal of BNO Design.
With past experience designing boutique properties for brands like Mondrian Hotels, Noriega-Ortiz brings a nervy aesthetic that contrasts the Disneyfied design dystopia typical in Times Square.
The Renaissance Times Square supports one of the two iconic, towering stacks of neon/video billboards that bookend the pedestrian mall. The hotel's Living Room lounge, which Noriega-Ortiz redefined, sits directly below the bottom of that signage.
Renaissance is actually required to keep the lights especially low inside the lounge to not compete with the illuminated advertising outside. It's a surreal view from the inside because the windows are level with the massive outdoor digital branding across the streets on both sides.
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