22 June 2018

HOTEL LUTETIA

DESIGN BY Jean-Michel Wilmotte
LOCATION Paris, France
YEAR 2018

An exclusive turnkey project supervised by Lema Contract that supplied the fittings for the 175 rooms and the Suite named after Josephine Baker of the iconic Hôtel Lutetia of Paris, which reopened in 2018 after a refurbishment that lasted over four years, having a value of over two hundred million euro. First opened in 1910 by the Boucicaut family, Lutetia immediately became a meeting point for writers and artists: from Joyce to Beckett, from Hemingway to Picasso. Acquired in 2010 by the Israeli group Alrov, it is currently the only 5-star hotel on the Rive Gauche. Lema has developed for every room a bespoke solution that could unite the aesthetic needs of the Jean-Michel Wilmotte project with the technical needs that the refurbishment on such a large scale of a historical building requires, integrating technical systems, security systems, air conditioning, domotics. A task of rediscovery and valorisation of the memory, both of the structures and of the furnishings: the refurbishment had as its main aim that of giving a new life to the building, cutting the number of rooms to increase their size, whilst keeping the original structure where possible, without demising its timeless appeal and historic value. Lema Contract completed the rooms supplying flooring, ceilings, wood panelling for the walls and the bow windows; wooden, glass and gold decorated doors, boiserie, bed headboards and mobile bar furnishing. Thanks to the profound expertise, Lema Contract has developed and completed internally also the boiserie in blue and grey durmast wood, with its delicate “textile” effect on the drawings provided by the Wilmotte architecture firm. A three-dimensional effect, a true work of high cabinet-making.