Gert Voorjans, the Antwerp-based designer behind the interiors of the Dries Van Noten stores and the famed Joyce boutique flagships in Hong Kong, has spent the last five years working on an ultra-luxury property belonging to the Shangri-La group. Part of the new Shangri-la Signatures brand of smaller hotels, The Silk Lakehouse is set in the woodlands along the UNESCO-listed West Lake in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.
On a recent trip to Asia he stopped by Manila House, a private members’ club whose signature sophisticated tropical aesthetic he created in 2016, en route to Hong Kong, where he presented his latest home collections, “Joy and Flair,” for Jim Thompson. The collections, which encompass furnishing fabrics, wall coverings and trimmings, mark his second collaboration with the global lifestyle brand headquartered in Thailand.
He spoke about the importance of communicating “the sense of place” in his design projects, and how that notion has come to redefine the meaning of luxury at a time when globalization has resulted in a homogeneity in the way we shop, dress, consume and live.
“What has happened until now is that you travel around the world, and you stay in hotels — we are not going to do name-dropping of famous hotels — but they are everywhere all over the world the same,” he said. “And they are nice, and they are in good taste, but you don’t know where you are anymore. If you are in New York, or if you are in Hong Kong, or you are in Manila, it’s all very generic, but beautifully done, but purely decorative in a general way.”
The sense of place, he explained, informs an approach that aims for more authenticity, for more character and for more individuality.
In The Silk Lakehouse, for instance, a 68-room hotel that is noticeably smaller than the standard Shangri-La property, the hospitality chain sought to focus more on well-being and interaction with nature. “Hangzhou is famous for its nature, and the lotus flower, which blossoms in June,” Voorjans said. The hotels in the area were adequate but utilitarian.
“What we did, in fact, was mirror the location into the interiors, as well as into the products, the food, the amenities, everything that you experience in that very special place — the walk around the lake, the fauna and the flora.”
Silk Lakehouse in Hangzhou, China. Courtesy photo.
He created four different templates for the rooms and suites, each one echoing elements of the surrounding nature as motifs on fabrics, carpets and walls, from the lotus flower and willow leaves to peacocks and cranes, all prominent in Chinese culture. He eschewed the “standard” room category. “We called it the Garden Room, because it’s already ultra-luxury, so it’s absolutely not standard at all.” There’s also the Romance Room, the Peacock Room and the one-of-a-kind Presidential Suite.
Voorjans is a passionate advocate of color and how it strengthens the sense of place. “I really believe in color, that color is vital and gives energy. I don’t think we can only survive on gray, or off-white; it can be dull. Of course, there are different opinions and different people and different demands, not to mention different worlds. But that is my point.”
A room at Silk Lakehouse. Courtesy photo.
He cited his 30-year experience designing the Dries Van Noten stores. When he did the Paris store, “all the other Dries stores wanted to have the same look. But that’s ridiculous. It may be wonderful in Paris but in Aoyama in Tokyo, we wanted to have a building, from Tadao Ando, and bring in there, Dries’ collection, you know, to have that kind of dialogue, and a kind of an interaction, so that you have that feeling that you know where you are, even if you bring in the clothes from the designer from Belgium. There might be some decoration, some element — we brought in some Renaissance paintings from Flemish artists in that Tadao Ando house to bring contrast and dialogue, but not a copy.”
At that time, he recalled other brands such as Prada and Giorgio Armani were doing the opposite. “The interiors, whether you were in Rome, Tokyo or New York, were all the same. It becomes very boring and very average, and people don’t get attracted anymore, you know, because we are already so brainwashed by uniformity.”
Voorjans’ focus is on blending heritage and modernity in a fresh, but relatable manner. It’s not about living too much in the past, he insisted. Rather, “the challenge for achieving that sense of place is for the new generation. It is for them to redefine that with the heritage that is there.”
“Heritage can be revisited, it can be rethought for the needs of today, and for the future. I really don’t like retro, I don’t like the nostalgia. I think the heritage is there to look into, to study, but please make something new and fresh out of it.”
He cautioned against over-romanticizing the past. “That is also not the energy what we are looking for today, I believe. I think it has to be contemporary, modern, but with a flair of heritage, and that’s beautiful, in a new way.”
