Town@HouseStreet is a new hospitality concept that develops vacant and decayed urban shop spaces, and turns their owners into hotelliers. Every space has an independent entrance directly from the window overlooking the street. Guest access is completely automated through an alphanumeric keypad.

During Milan Design Week 2010, the first four suites, designed by Italian architect Simone Micheli, were opened in a commercial ground floor space at Via Goldoni 33 in Milan.

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Description of Town@House Street by Simone Micheli:

“When Alessandro spoke to me about this concept and of the entrepreneurial project, everything immediately appeared clear. My interior architecture project should transmit, uniqueness, strong identity, incredible interconnection with the urban system, leaving out all known stereotypes. Therefore I have created extremely evocative places, practical, intriguing, capable to become veritable manifests, a new way of thinking the world of hospitality, a new way to conceive the relation between receptivity dimension and the city. In this project the metropolitan connective external spaces considered as hotel corridors, penetrate into the buildings confined spaces transforming the perception. The osmosis research, pertained to content between the outside and inside, exasperated by Maurizio Marcato’s brilliant photographic contribution, has originated an explosive iconic mixture”.

A project born in Milan but intended for the leading metropolis around the world. A commercial ground, on the first floor of Via Goldoni 33 has been transformed in prime hotel suite facing the street, without a reception and completely automated. An idea conceived by Alessandro Rosso and materialized by architect Simone Micheli, has given light to four suites original in the conception and in their image. A new contemporary hospitality concept is brought forth by the desire to retrain those degraded or abandoned metropolitan spaces; the canonical hotel stereotypes are totally refuted: the reception, lobby, stairs, lifts and corridors are omitted. The single suite overlooks straight onto the city street, each having an independent access directly from the glazed door facing the street, electronically controlled by an alphanumeric keyboard on which one can digit the reservation code carried out on line through the web site (www.townhousestreet.com). Whoever enters the suite does it without further filters, directly from the city, crossing the threshold of what once was a commercial activity disused by now. It is the very same city that enters the suite with the metropolitan traveller sliding along the wall permeating completely. A semantics osmosis in which meaning and meaningful coincide, the room becomes the city and vice versa “Home away from Home”. The macro photographs, realised by Maurizio Marcato depict breathtaking views over the city which enwrap the spaces expanding, transforming and containing in a confine space the ample dimensions of squares, streets, and most revealing monuments.

The unique views which strongly distinguish the city, identify and name the four suites as “the street” giving each one a different flavour. The square becomes the entrance hall, the street is the corridor. Four palm trees four metre high, planted in as many vases still designed by Simone Micheli are coloured differently as per the suite dominant shade, in front of which they stand, settled on the pavement facing the windows, they recreate a sort of open, public V.I.P lounge which exclusively identify the “town@house street”. Even though it is difficult to speak of a real exterior since the canonical borders between the interior and exterior merge, integrate, disappear in a symbolic dimension, both allusive and transfigured, Externally, the entrance windows of each suite are highlighted by 32” monitors suspended on shiny snow-white chain guards, windows overlooking other worlds which open onto as many windows, window cases: a memory of the commercial use for which the ground was set, open directly onto the rooms which are offered to the city and offering the city to their user. A continuous text generated by adhesive vinily film transfer chasing one another from a window to the other, along the entire height, filters the sun light tracing the fleeting limit between the interior and exterior otherwise perfectly permeable. A curtain. A flexuous and sinuous dark voile is the only real parting with the surrounding world. The four PHS suite (permanent hospitality spaces) “town@house street” of via Goldoni are approximately articulated on a 35 square metre surface each, with the exception of one double suite of around 50 square metre, emerging as real and proper mini apartments complete with every comfort. Every suite is equipped with a wardrobe, bathroom and kitchen. Every suite is different not only for the main colours and the digital printed images but also for design solutions applied on each furniture components.

Visit the Town@HouseStreet website – here.

Visit Simone Micheli’s website – here.

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