Following the usual hotel suspects in Macau, the former Portuguese colony has been welcoming a few new players into the fold. Case in point, the new Macau Roosevelt. While the gaming capital is known for opulent indulgences, some guests want more design-driven accommodations to go with their roulette. And there is no better lifestyle to replicate than the glamorous golden age of Hollywood, home to the first Roosevelt outpost. To that end, owner Yoho Group and operator Gaw Capital Partners Hospitality sought the talents of Los Angeles-based Gulla Jónsdóttir Architecture + Design—who had a heavy hand in crafting the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel—to make their star-dusted dreams come true.
With the brand’s colorful past, including hosting the first Academy Awards in 1929, there was a lot of pressure to get things right for its first overseas property and Yoho Group’s debut hotel. “One of our design signatures is creating drama by juxtaposing two very different elements, just like in the natural world,” explains Jónsdóttir. “The light and the dark, masculine and feminine, rough and smooth.”
The contrasts could not be more striking. The 368 rooms are sumptuous, with white oak flooring and a lavish use of materials such as bronze and stone in unexpected ways. In corner suites, for instance, a built-in wood and marble window seat doubles as a desk. Large wood dividers in bathrooms are set against bronze doors and black and white marble feature walls carved with an organic pattern akin to inkblots, where polished and raw stone meet at beveled edges for a layered 3D effect. “The guest will feel as if they are bathing in nature but within the luxury of the hotel,” she says.
Jónsdóttir often employs sensual curves and voluptuous forms in her projects, which she continues here in details like an undulating bronze back wall behind the uplit bronze reception desk. However, it’s the “beautiful, delicate” lotus flower (a significant motif in Chinese culture) that pervades much of the design, including in wall sconces on private balconies with glass balustrades. “It reminded us of lotus leaves overlapping on ponds in a more abstracted, angular form,” she explains. Meanwhile, handles on guestroom entry doors are like jewelry, informed by the shape of the green leaves floating around the flower. “It almost creates a poem: the lotus is blown by the wind at the headboard bronze wall and carried through the space in the form of petals at the entry door.” The flower is also carved into the tiles around the pools as blossoms emerging from the pond, while the flowing pool itself contains no straight lines, a nod to local flora and fauna.
Reinterpreting laidback California poolside lounging, Jónsdóttir imbued the third level—which features the all-day dining restaurant Casa Roosevelt with outdoor seating, as well as a private wine lounge, bar, and fitness center that lead to the three connected pools—with a strong personality. More concrete undulating walls show up here, this time as the restaurant ceiling, held up in some places by round bronze columns. Floors, meanwhile, feature traditional Portuguese patterns. “The inlay process is an old handcrafted technique that we thought befitting,” she says. “The craftsmanship throughout the property, seen in the inlays, chipped marble, and curved walls and ceilings, is something that many contractors cannot do.”
The hotel’s most striking feature is arguably the lobby’s vertical garden. Revealed as a sliver in the white marble ceiling above the reception desk, it expands organically as it moves upward, growing as it meanders across the 30-foot-tall wood-slatted double-height ceiling. Floor-to-ceiling windows and towering bronze steel screens informed by the shape of lotus leaves (they separate the ground-floor restaurant 25 Degrees and the lobby) complete the dramatic space. “I am very inspired by nature, and the vertical gardens help give the property a resort feeling,” Jónsdóttir adds.
