A New Hotel Concept from West Elm Takes Shape

In 2016, modern furniture retailer West Elm, along with hospitality management firm DDK, announced plans for five new boutique hotels  across the US that channel the company’s unique and highly identifiable brand, complete with West Elm furnishings throughout the rooms and public spaces.

Six cities were selected as initial markets for the new hotel concept: Detroit, Minneapolis, Savannah, Oakland, Portland, and RATIO’s hometown of Indianapolis.

RATIO is excited to be working with West Elm and Hendricks Commercial Properties to design the West Elm Indianapolis, part of Hendricks’ $260 million Bottleworks redevelopment along Indy’s trendy Massachusetts Avenue corridor.

Last month, the RATIO team traveled to West Elm’s new headquarters in Brooklyn to understand more about the West Elm lifestyle. Here’s what they learned…

Founded in Brooklyn in 2002, West Elm operates at “the intersection of modern design, affordability and community.” Branching out into the built environment creates a setting for customers to interact with the brand in new and immersive ways – which means every aspect of that setting must communicate the spirit of West Elm. This is our challenge as architects and interior designers on the project.

So how do we plan to do this? With West Elm’s design leadership and DDK’s management expertise, RATIO will focus on formulating a cohesive design that tells the West Elm story and anchors each property with an authentic sense of place.

To that goal, perhaps most importantly is beginning with a unique place with historic architecture and a compelling story (West Elm is very familiar and successful with this strategy, as you can see from their adaptation of the formerly industrial neighborhood fabric of the Brooklyn waterfront).

This strategy fits well with our most valued design tenets: RATIO was founded as a preservation-focused firm, and even in our contemporary ground-up work, we still aim for timeless design that respects the surrounding context and furthers the story of a place.

 “To me, the West Elm aesthetic works best when overlaid with something equally as powerful: in this case the interaction between the mid-century mod inspired furniture with the historic art deco building,” said RATIO Architect and West Elm Indianapolis Project Director Jeff Milliken. “The building we have to work with here has an aged but rich ornateness that provides a balance with the refined lines and color tones of West Elm’s aesthetic.”

That building, which will eventually anchor the entire Bottleworks district of office space, residences, restaurants, and entertainment venues, is a historic Coca-Cola bottling plant built in 1931. This hotel project takes a preservation-minded approach that references the building’s original Art Deco design (and preserving it, too – thousands of original terra cotta façade panels will be restored and replaced with exacting replicas) while creating something entirely new.

Restoration and construction have begun on both the hotel and the surrounding Bottleworks district, even as we continue to refine the design of public spaces inside and surrounding the hotel. Follow the progress of both projects here on our website and at westelmhotels.com.