Hotel of the Week: Philippe Starck Executes an Architectural Fantasy with a Castle Atop a Modern Building
In Metz, France, Maison Heler is chock-full of extraordinary surprises, including a 19th-century Lorraine-style chalet perfected on the ninth-floor roof
Glimpsed from the road in Metz’s humming Amphithéatre district, the newly opened Maison Heler, a 104-room hotel with two restaurants and bars, may not seem particularly remarkable from the exterior until you look toward the sky. Sacré bleu! Sitting atop the ninth-floor roof garden of this contemporary cement monolith in France is a traditional 19th-century Lorrain-style chalet. The house glints in the sun like a mirage, as if it had been magically uprooted and elevated.
The building is the home of Manfred Heler, but no use Googling this extraordinary French turn-of-the-century inventor—designer Philippe Starck dreamed him up entirely and then went about drafting every infinitesimal detail of the rooms and public spaces from his fictional tale. “When you enter the hotel, you immediately step into another world,” Starck tells Galerie. “The door closes behind you, and you find yourself somewhere else, as if you have entered the mind of Manfred Heler.”
Guests can read all about this Metz-born character in Starck’s slim bilingual novel, The Meticulous Life of Manfred Heler (Allary Editions), or simply succumb to the cozy-meets-quirky atmosphere that exudes an out-of-time charm. Briefly summed up, it’s the story of an orphaned protagonist, Manfred, who inherits his family home in a vast park and becomes an inventor out of boredom. Unexpected things happen regularly, from an earthquake that propels his house into the air above the city, to the sudden apparition of Nyou, a tattooed dwarf and king of a deserted African island, who has crossed the Earth through its center before arriving in Metz to become Manfred’s drinking companion.
“For each of my projects, I act like a film director,” Starck explains. “Each imagined place tells its own story, unfolds its own scenario. For me, one of the most important elements is warmth, humanity, the fact that you feel good, that you feel at home. To achieve this, it is important to have a story that makes the air vibrate, that sets it to music.”
Those subtle vibrations begin the moment you step through the entrance and into the hotel’s main floor, which extends from the reception to the all-day brasserie and bar serving refined local fare, La Cuisine de Rose. Inspired by Manfred’s imaginary love, a milkmaid named Rose (“a mysterious woman whom we do not know if he’s ever met or not,” Starck adds), the décor is an alluring combination of pink marble, white-tiled walls and dark-hue seating. The idea behind the color scheme was to combine the feel of Manfred’s laboratory of inventions (white, charcoal) with his romantic fantasies. Everything—the handpicked dishware, glasses, and menus—is a dusty shade of pink. Suspended from the ceiling over the eye-catching pink marble bar is a wooden airplane like a giant origami.
Other surprises abound: scattered about the restaurant are glass display cases of wacky objects that correspond to Manfred’s improbable creations—a pair of webbed rubber amphibian boots, a crystal hammer “for delicate tasks,” a double-edged saw—which Starck replicated from descriptive passages in his novel. Among the curated selection of rare books piled near each table, you can page through a whimsical pseudo-scientific 1969 work called Catalogue d’objets introuvables by Jacques Carelman, French painter, illustrator, and author, cited by Starck as a source of inspiration.
Upstairs, in the corridors, more playful touches prevail—plush dark carpets adorned with Manfred’s hieroglyphics and, in front of each room, a series of arresting illuminated signs, taken from vintage photos, ranging from peculiar objects with far-fetched uses to men wearing bizarre contraptions (The Broken Heart Centrifuge, Bypass-Vision Glasses). Funnily enough, these images were sourced from documented inventions registered with France’s National Archives and the CNRS (National Center of Scientific Research).
The deeply comfortable rooms are intentionally minimalist (“almost Spartan”, says Starck), a medley of raw concrete, brick, and marble, with soft leather chairs, sliding mirrors, and square marble sinks. And, if guests care to decipher Manfred’s secret alphabet, the walk-in closet is lined with symbols; small brass cameos, like ancient coins, are discreetly incrusted into the wall bearing Manfred’s smiling face.
How did Starck come up with the poetic spirit of his protagonist? “More than ten years ago, I was inspired by the surrealist writer Raymond Roussel, for whom I have a true passion—especially for his novel Impressions d’Afrique which recounts the African adventures of someone who has never actually been to this continent,” he explains. Considered a literary outsider, Roussel, an eccentric millionaire dandy admired by everyone from Salvador Dalí to André Breton, is best known for his elaborate secret constraints in writing techniques; expect novels and plays that are populated by bizarre characters and incredible machines, but logically narrated with scientific clarity.
The most beguiling aspect of the hotel design is the ninth floor rooftop gastronomic restaurant, La Maison de Manfred, conceived to resemble an old-fashioned family home. The real showstopper is the bar, bathed in color from the stained-glass windows by Ara Starck—a nod to the Metz’s stunning Sainte-Etienne Cathedral, renowned for the largest expanse of stained glass in the world. The low-lit dining room, lined with black and white photographs that evoke an imaginary past, is a warm mix of wood and dark brown leather furniture, regional ceramics, and pink flower painted plates.
Come sunset, drinks are served on the panoramic rooftop terrace where the metallic siding of the house takes on a surreal orange-pink glow. Here, guests can sip “Manfred Heler” cocktails (cinnamon-spiked gin, homemade brioche syrup, and roasted pineapple) and admire the view of the nearby Centre Pompidou-Metz, now celebrating its 15th anniversary with an exhibition by Maurizio Cattelan along with hundreds of works from Paris’ Centre Pompidou’s collection.
“Maison Heler is an escape to dreams, utopia, love, and poetry,” Starck muses. A hotel where the pataphysical science of imaginary solutions generates concrete ideas in design that float in the clouds.