Philippe Starck reveals surrealist hotel topped with 19th-century mansion

Designer Philippe Starck has unveiled the surreal nine-storey Maison Heler hotel in Metz, France, which is topped with what appears to be a 19th-century mansion.

Fully conceived by Starck, the hotel aims to tell the surreal story of Manfred Heler, an imaginary man whose mansion was thrust nine storeys into the air.

"Manfred Heler has inherited his parents' beautiful house," explained Stark. "As an orphan, he finds himself all alone, in this mansion surrounded by a large park. Everything's going well for him, until he starts to get bored."

"To cope with this boredom, he tries to invent everything," he continued. "An extraordinarily rigorous and inventive man, he doesn't necessarily succeed in everything he undertakes, but it's always done with intelligence and poetry, guided by a naive desire to create meticulously at all costs."

This mansion, which is entirely clad in metal, now stands on top of a nine-storey monolithic tower. It contains a restaurant, bar and event spaces.

In Starck's tale, Heler was in the mansion when it was raised into the air without warning.

"It's springtime," said Starck. "He's daydreaming in his armchair. Suddenly, the earth begins to tremble."

"He doesn't understand what's happening," he continued. "He looks around and realises, to his aghast, that he's going up in the air, along with his park, his house and his armchair."

"He climbs and climbs and climbs, until the shaking stops," he added.

"Then there's silence. Manfred is high above the city. His house has been extruded: as if a cookie-cutter had arrived from below, cut off the Earth's cap and mounted it vertically."

The mansion interiors were designed to evoke the 19th-century spaces of Heler's fictional home.

Throughout the rooms, "whimsical objects" were placed that were designed by Starck. These include a crystal hammer, plaster anvils, double-ended axes and inverted rocking chairs.

Below the mansion, the nondescript tower contains 104 bedroom suites.

The rooms were designed to contrast with the eclectic spaces in the mansion. Each has large windows, exposed concrete ceilings and plain white walls that can be largely covered in pale, full-height curtains.

"[They have] an almost spartan spirit," explained Starck.

"Stripped of any superficiality, where each material asserts its own colour: the white of cotton, the grey of concrete on the ceiling and walls."

The hotel's reception is located on the ground floor alongside a restaurant named La Cuisine de Rose, dedicated to Heler's imaginary lover. Again contrasting the mansion, the restaurant has bright interiors with dark furniture and opens into a tree-filled terrace.

The hotel is the latest surreal building by Starck, who recently designed a "strange and surrealist" olive oil mill and museum in Andalusia.

The photography is by Julius Hirtzberger.

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