Vacations To Cabo San Lucas

Celebrated French architect Jean Nouvel keeps arguing against generalist architecture. In October 2009, Nouvel has presented one of his latest works, the Pavilion B at Genoa’s Nautical Tradeshow. With a impressive lesson on aesthetics, Nouvel, who holds the Pritzker Architecture Prize 2008, has accounted for the essence of his accomplishment: his goal was to lay the edifice within the urban and social texture of the city of Genoa.

Indeed, from the vantage point of the water, the construction is in harmony with the sea and the moored boats. A similar impression can be felt by other of Nouvel’s productions like the Muse Quai Branly in Paris, the Akbar Tower in Barcelona and the project in Colle Val d’Elsa in Tuscany. Nouvel proclaims himself resistant to the “carbon copy cities” in an interview by Renata Fontanelli appeared in La Repubblica, Italy, on October 12th 2009, and of which here are some snippets roughly translated from Italian:

“Nowadays you cannot tell the difference from San Paolo in Brazil from Dubai or Shanghai from Milan because it is as if the project designers do not seem to take into account the uniqueness of each urban agglomeration . Architects do not seem to look at the light, the wind, the water, the history and the culture that make every city, be it small or large, unique. [...] Today,” concludes Nouvel, “modern architecture lies in the relation with its context.”

This vision is in accord to the modern traveler’s growing attention to boutique hotels. Indeed, in the past 20 years the market of boutique hotels has experienced a remarkable boom and this is arguably due to the fact that people are looking more and more for a hotel that can give them a pinch of the city’s essence, rather than choosing a “carbon copy hotel”, a “big box” like you could find in any other city.

Just like a “boutique” in French is a small upscale shop as opposed to a big department store, in the same way a boutique hotel is different from a bigger Hotel Chain, which is generally standardized in features and looks. Boutique hotels are more expected to deliver the zest of the location where it is set and it is by and large a one-of-a-kind experience.

In a world that is turning towards standardization, where supplies, stores, restaurants, indeed society in general is developing into a homogenized entity, boutique hotels are a beacon for diversity and originality.