East Hotel

A few years ago the East Hotel in Hamburg, Germany was the mossy skeleton of an old brick and concrete iron foundry sitting windowless and tattooed with graffiti on the edge of the harbor-side red-light district of St. Pauli, where the Beatles got their start.  Now the old foundry building houses an extraordinarily successful hospitality business made up of four lounges, a restaurant, a bar, and connects to a new boutique hotel.

Howard Watson of Architecture and Design, London:
“East Restaurant and it’s bars are just about incomparable to any other establishment, largely because of the very distinctive style of Jordan Mozer and Associates, Limited, a Chicago -based design company… Mozer is a true original .

The 250 seat restaurant 32’ ceilings with four sets of 28 foot tall glass doors that open onto a courtyard / garden-lounge. A sculpted plaster wall encloses private dining rooms at the cellar, a beanbag stuffed Lounge at entry level, and the elegant skybox, called the Smirnoff Lounge, overlooking the restaurant.  Across the main dining room, a sixty foot long bar spills out into the lobby and onto a terrace overlooking the garden. The new building houses sixty five guest rooms, a rooftop spa and sixty subterranean parking spaces.
 

Farhad Heydari
for Architectural Record, New York:
Having created eye-popping restaurants such as the Cypress Club in San Francisco and Nectar in Las Vegas, Chicago based designer Jordan Mozer is now leaving his mark in Hamburg Germany. His East Hotel, a cutting edge yet lucid 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.

The design was inspired by the old foundry and the cast forms it produced, ideas about the balance between global and local culture infused with personal (non-universal) Asian memory fragments tempered with an Eastern approach to nature as a positive spiritual element. The project began with the question, ”How can the design elicit an emotional response similar to a Westerner in Asia the first time?”

Giesela Williams, The New York Times Sunday Travel Section:
“When the party crowd from some of Hamburg’s wealthier circles head to St. Pauli, they’re frequently found at East, an upscale hotel and restaurant-lounge that opened in a former iron foundry last fall, designed by the Chicago based designer Jordan Mozer…It’s not just the colorful design or the designer cocktails that make East so fresh, it’s that such a place exists just a few minutes’ walk from the Reeperhahn. Like other posh lounges and restaurants sandwiched between the neighborhoods dark car lots and sex shops, the extreme juxtaposition works amazingly well.”

The design was inspired by molten and cast forms metal, old factories, fat raindrops,the palette of Kathmandu, unexpected shifts of scale and form, the juxtaposition of familiar and strange, ancient and modern, the idea of a nature as the embodiment of spirituality.

From the Conde Nast Traveler
Hot List’s 16 Best New Hotels in the World:
East is the first swank and sophisticated hotel to open around the corner from the city’s funky Reeperbahn red-light district….ranging in size from small to XXL, all 78 rooms are minimalist yet offer everything the modern nomad needs; comfortable beds, rainfall showerheads, flat screen TVs, and high end bath products. The deor in it’s signature restaurant – stained glass windows, enormous undulating columns, dramatic lighting- suggests that dining is the new religious…”

Almost every design element in the interior of old foundry and new hotel was designed and fabricated especially for East.

Space, Singapore
It’s safe to say that Jordan Mozer has come full circle. The designer, who launched his practice with a commission to restore factories in his native Chicago in the early 1980’s, and who has gone on to create restaurants, bars, luxury retail outlets and public spaces from Las Vegas to London, has just completed his latest – and perhaps best – work: a triumphantly transformed foundry-turned –boutique hotel, called East in Hamburg, Germany. Throughout his 20-odd years, Mozer has consistently tapped into his more experimental side (besides his diplomas in architecture and industrial design, he studied art) by injecting imaginative organic forms and themes that, as perfectly illustrated at East, have transformed otherwise rudimentary spaces into lucid, thoroughly unique experiences”

Blueprint, London:
“The deep cellar of a brick iron foundry is the location for an extraordinary new boutique hotel and club in the harbor-side entertainment district of Hamburg”

Gold Key Finalist for Best Hotel Design
Interiors Magazine, New York:
“East Hotel, Hamburg, Germany; the hotel, a former foundry , houses a restaurant with 35 foot tall plaster pillars and walls have dramatic sculpted features”

Cover Stories: Trends, New Zealand; Interiors, Seoul Korea; Sleeper, London; I4Design, Chicago:
“East Restaurant and it’s bars are just about incomparable to any other establishment, largely because of the very distinctive style of Jordan Mozer and Associates, Limited, a Chicago based design company. With its cathedral-like proportions and huge, mushroom-stalk pillars, the nearest reference point for East – aside from the designer’s own previous work - is probable the work of Antonio Gaudi, with whom Mozer seems to share a passion for both organic forms and unbridled nonconformity. Any further comparison to Gaudi would be to head down a blind alley, though. Mozer is a true original who has found success in the architectural genres where aesthetic risk and innovation are now most likely to be prevalent; bars, restaurants and hotels.”
Howard Watson The Mix, London

The popularity of East compelled the owners to expand from 77 rooms to 130.  Like all projects, East was a team effort. The founders and managers include real estate developer Thomas Kreye of Kreye und Partner, restaurant entrepreneur Christoph Strenger and Roland Koch, bar developer Marc Ciunas and hotel manager Annemarie Bauer. The design efforts were led by Jordan Mozer and Associates Limited, of Chicago. Kreye und Partner provided the local architecture services with a team led by architect Edgar Stofferson.

Global Design Report, London:
”Designed to fill a niche in the boutique hotel market in Hamburg, East Hotel recently opened in an old brick iron foundry in the entertainment district of Sr. Pauli…The popularity of the East Hotel (already at 80% occupancy) has compelled the owners to begin the addition of 26 additional guest rooms just four weeks after completing the original 80.”

To illustrate our dedication to this aspect of the design process, we have listed below a partial list of design-storytelling activities:
Young Chicago, an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago

Press:
The New York Times Sunday Travel Section
Cree, Paris
The Conde Nast Traveler Hot List
Allegra, Germany
Bar and Club Design Book, London
Travel and Leisure
AD, London
Spa-De, Tokyo Japan
Sleeper, London
The Mix, London
Blueprint, London
Space, Singapore
In-Design, Shanghai
Architectural Record, New York
Hospitality Design, New York
Wallpaper, London
Navigator, London
The Chicago Tribune
Time-Out
AIT Germany
Taburet, Moscow
Interiors, Seoul Korea
Hotels, New York
Interior Design, New York
Industry, Australia
Trends, new Zealand
Boutique Hotels , New York