by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

Summary: Shakespeare has finally become hip. San Francisco-based SB Architects has teamed with Hard Rock Hotels and Nexus Companies to develop the Hard Rock Hotel Palm Springs, a 520,000 square foot, nine-story hotel and condominium on a 10-acre site. The project, which resonates Shakespearean theater coupled with today’s upscale hospitality, is aimed at attracting a young crowd from surrounding cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix. Although the Hard Rock Hotel Palm Springs is not a rock and roll theme hotel, its design functions as stage to allow guests to alternate as rock & roll “performer” or “audience.” Construction of the project begins in May 2008 and is scheduled for completion in 2010.

How do you . . . design an upscale, contemporary hotel experience that attracts a hip clientele and makes guests feel as if they are “performing” or “observing” onstage?

The Hard Rock Hotel Palm Springs will market the theme of the high-end, rock-and-roll lifestyle, as opposed to a rock-and-roll theme. Albeit it in Palm Springs, Calif., the Hard Rock Hotel Palm Springs will target a young weekend crowd from surrounding cities, primarily Los Angeles. It will be owned by Nexus Companies, a developer that works with Los Angeles music industry clients, and is operated by Hard Rock. The hotel will be located one block from downtown Palm Springs and sited adjacent to the Palm Springs Convention Center to plug into the weekday business traveler demographic. It will be the tenth Hard Rock Hotel, but its first upscale hotel property. The hotel will have 490 luxury hotel rooms, condominiums, and penthouse suites, and feature amenities such as high-end restaurants and hot tubs on balconies; a meeting space, nightclub, rock spa, and performance/banquet hall; and 24-hours of lively music. To underscore Hard Rock’s move toward luxury, the traditional Hard Rock café and signature guitar on the roof are not part of the design plan. Hard Rock and Nexus also hope to attract rock stars and host rock events.

Scene and be seen
“This hotel will be more oriented toward a young, active crowd,” says Thomas E. Sprinkle, AIA, design architect and principal in charge. “Hard Rock is moving away from rock-and-roll theme hotels and instead marketing properties that promote the lifestyle of a rock star. I think one reason we won this commission is we didn’t want to do a rock theme either. I think people think you put a big guitar on the building and glue vinyl records to the wall and you’re done, but Hard Rock wanted this hotel to be a place where guests can live the lifestyle of a rock star rather be a place with a just a rock-and-roll theme.”

The Hard Rock Hotel Palm Springs will inject nightlife and young, vibrant patrons into sleepy Palm Springs and be the tallest building in the city. The project ties into Palm Springs revitalization of its relationship with star-studded Los Angeles, just 90 minutes away. “The design is not meant to be retro or nostalgic, but we are nodding toward the mid-century architecture history of Palm Spring while interpreting in a contemporary way. It sort of goes back to the Rat Pack,” says Sprinkle.

Hotel as a Shakespearean stage
SB Architects aimed to create a rock star “performer/audience” guest experience, as if on a modern-day rock star stage, or a traditional Shakespearean stage. Explains Sprinkle: “The guest experience begins as they move via car up an entry ramp through the auto court to the front door of the hotel, about mid-point of the site on the second floor. There you are surrounded by box seating. It’s the first point where you, as guest, are arriving at the hotel as if on stage. The design precedents are as if you are in a Shakespearean theater, where everyone is sitting in a box seat, and you’re arriving. There will be a sense that you’re being watched and performing, with spotlights on you for the arrival sequence.”

Sprinkle says the performer experience occurs throughout the project in tandem with the experience of being a rock star observer. As an example of the performer/audience experience, Sprinkle cites the hotel’s balconies that surround the pool. “When you are at the pool, everyone is on stage and being watched, from the audience on the balconies.” Sprinkle adds that the intent of interspersed red balconies, which are VIP balconies, create an “egg crate” palette forming privacy between each unit. “It’s eggs in containers,” he says. “The red boxes also break up the façade, and the performer/audience experience is turned around because then you are ‘on stage’ and everyone at the pool is looking up at you. Red has something a bit sexy and has immediate triggers in the mind, and the lighting in those balconies is more theatrical and exhibitionist.”

“Being observed—and observing—continues to flip back and forth as you move through the project. I think we brought to it the sense that you’re on stage as much as you want,” Sprinkle says. A large projection will even be featured on the side of the building showing guests in action.

Thirteen penthouse suites with 12-foot-deep balconies featuring fire pits and hot tubs. Sprinkle points out guests can party like rock stars, and even sleep all day with black-out curtains and sound acoustics in each room. He adds there will always be music “pumping throughout the project.”

“But,” he adds, “no guitar on the roof.”