East Hotel Restaurant
Hamburg, Germany
Jordan Mozer & Associates

Jordan Mozer took an old foundry in a seedy part of town and turned it into an über-hip place to eat and sleep

© Doug Snower

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By Farhad Heydari

As the grayest—and possibly dreariest—city in Germany, Hamburg has always been ruled by the elements, be they sea winds or incessant rain. In response, architects have speckled the city center with angular steel-and-glass facades meant to catch the errant ray of sun, and enlivened the buildings with brightly lit indoor passages aimed at keeping people from venturing outside. So it’s no surprise that Europe’s second-largest port has morphed into something of an experimental playground for designers using splashy interiors to spruce up the city’s otherwise colorless milieu.

Having created eye-popping restaurants such as the the Cypress Club in San Francisco and Nectar in Las Vegas, Chicago-based designer Jordan Mozer is now leaving his mark in Hamburg. His East Hotel—a cutting-edge yet ludic transformation of a brick iron foundry just off the city’s notorious Reeperbahn red-light district and two blocks away from the club where the Beatles got their start—has been drawing long lines of revelers since it opened in November 2004.

The hotel is the second collaboration between Mozer and the Hamburg-based restaurant-bar group Gastro Consulting, coming shortly after the completion of a nearby bar called Herzblut, which has also been a big hit.

Given an abandoned foundry in the rapidly gentrifying St. Pauli district, Mozer was asked to create a boutique hotel with 77 guest rooms, several lounges and bars, and a large Asian-European fusion restaurant. The client team of real estate developer Thomas Kreye, restaurant entrepreneur Christoph Strenger, and bar developer Marc Ciunas requested theatrics for the interiors in order to woo Hamburg’s clued-in night owls, who would make up the lion’s share of customers in the public spaces.

Want the full story? Read the entire article in our November 2005 issue.
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Formal name of Project:
East Hotel Restaurant

Location:
Hamburg, Germany

Owner:
East Hamburg
Restaurant Bar Lounge Hotel
Simon-Von-Utrecht-Strasse 31
20359 Hamburg, Germany
+49 040-30 99 30
Fax +49 040-30 99 32 00
Email info@east-hamburg.de
www.east-hamburg.de

Design Architect:
Jordan Mozer & Associates Limited
320 West Ohio, 7th Floor
Chicago, IL 60610
312.397.1133 tel.
312.397.1233, fax
invention@mozer.com
www.mozer.com