As guests step through the glass doors of klapsons, Singapore’s newest boutique hotel, the combination of 5-star luxury and a unique sensitivity towards contemporary design is immediately apparent. William Sawaya of Sawaya & Moroni spearheaded the design team and the results are sensational. Klapsons, The Boutique Hotel attempts to revise the face of both business and leisure travel to Singapore by affording a quiet sophistication and a subtle sense of luxury joined with a sincere functionality.
Sawaya has carefully given each guestroom at klapsons an individualised design identity so that no two are alike. The custom-made guestrooms aim to bring a unique experience, new comforts and new indulgences to distinguish every stay at the innovative hotel. The element that does unite the guestrooms is without a doubt the opulent pampering ranging from Egyptian cotton sheets and goose down bedding, to Wi-Fi and a Nespresso machine. The Sleeping Rhino, klapsons 1st floor restaurant, features down to earth western cuisine infiltrated with contemporary elegance. Also on hand are an alfresco bar and a lounge, one beyond The Sleeping Rhino’s floor-to-ceiling windows and the other just a floor above. Subtle yet suitable for the savviest, klapsons brings a new frontier in hotel ideology to Singapore’s Central Business District.
Functionality, innovation and timelessness are the three philosophies that inform klapsons, The Boutique Hotel’s design ethic. It is Singapore’s newest boutique hotel’s emphasis on these 3 fundamental ideals of design – functionality, innovation and timelessness – that has situated it as the finest example of each in the bustling financial capital.
It took 3 years to translate these seemingly simple principles into reality and the results are impeccable. Functionality is clearly of the
utmost importance to this elegant specimen, which is a business hotel that exists to satisfy its guests by making each stay as convenient, comfortable and satisfying as possible. At klapsons, no single element is arbitrary.
From the interaction of spaces, heights of tables and chairs, lighting controls and other simple technologies, the hotel is born out of function and practicality. The term, “Innovation”, is often thrown around meaninglessly. To see it actually in practice is a rare and momentous occasion. klapsons delivers that opportunity.
From its 3-tierd organic ceiling to its massive steel sphere that greets guests as the enter the through the hotel’s elegant glass doors and even to its use of industrial mesh to construct a wall, innovation at its best is omnipresent at klapsons. The experience of even a visit to this building, which was miraculously transformed from a commercial building through the use of space, materials and strategic fittings throughout the building, provides a glance into how a thoughtful design process can lead to truly innovative solutions.
Finally, timelessness…Under Sawaya’s guidance, klapsons, The Boutique Hotel aims to remove itself from the framework of a temporal design ethos. Sawaya has constructed the hotel in such a way as to do just that. He has inserted elements that somehow speak to generations, remaining eternally ‘of the moment.’ Sawaya himself even designed the klapsons coffee table that is made from a special Plexiglas and stands as a symbol of the hotel. The klapsons table premiered at the 2008 Milan furniture and has since been sold to and placed in many other Sawaya & Moroni projects. It is this distinctive, ubiquitous and yet, functional style that presently defines and will continue to fortify klapsons, The Boutique Hotel.