The Royal Hotel
South Miami Beach, Fla.
Jordan Mozer and Associates

Bringing fresh spirit to an old hotel with architectural, multipurpose furniture

© Doug Snower

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

Set on Washington Avenue, the throbbing heart of South Beach’s club zone, the newly renovated Royal Hotel pulls in style-conscious 20- and 30-somethings at an affordable $130 a night. With just four months for design and construction and only $107,000 for construction and furnishings, Chicago designer Jordan Mozer transformed the hotel’s 42 rooms. Work continues on restoring the concrete building’s landmarked exterior to its original 1938 glory and extending the lobby with a new bar and lounge that Mozer has designed as a breezy social hub.

Using just paint, carpeting, and new lights, Mozer turned the hotel’s narrow hallways into color-saturated experiences with key-lime, purple-blue, and marigold setting the tone. But as soon as guests open the doors to their rooms, they get something completely different: white marble floors, mostly white walls, and white furniture. Color seeps into the room by way of bleached-lime or bleached-blue paint on one wall and a strip of carpeting on the floor. The show-stoppers, though, are the two pieces of furniture that dominate the room: the bed’s biomorphic headboard with built-in bar and nightstand and an equally curvaceous chaise, or "digital throne," sprouting surfaces for a computer monitor and keyboard.

The bed headboard and chaise are made of a woven glass-reinforced resin that is molded, sanded, then coated with a fire-resistant finish. Mozer worked with a structural engineer in designing the furniture so the pieces can accommodate guests who happen to stand on the bar while mixing drinks or mistake the nightstand for a chair. As he does with most projects, Mozer designed and built all of the custom furnishings in his Chicago studio.

See the May 2001 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of building:
The Royal Hotel

Location:
South Miami Beach, Fla.

Gross square footage:
16,100 sq ft

Total construction cost:
$107,000

Owner:
Judith Berson and Steven Z. Levinson

Architect's firm:
Jordan Mozer and Associates, Limited