Inside The New Nolitan

If good things come to those who wait, by our watch The Nolitan Hotel, the 55-room hotel on the corner of Elizabeth and Kenmare, is long overdue to become New York’s downtown darling.

We stopped into the offices of architects Matthew Grzywinski and Amador Pons of Grzywinski + Pons to chat about their design approach to The Nolitan, including its restaurant, ellabess. Little did we know, we should have brought our boxing gloves. But more about that later.

The Nolitan Hotel (and its construction) has been on our radar for a few years. There’s no other way to say this: what took so long?

MG: We were 29 inches from the JMZ subway line. Our foundation was very complex and we had to do it under the direct oversight of the Metropolitan Transit Authority—

AP: On their schedule.

MG: It took us over a year to get out of the ground. New York City is among the most regulated and bureaucratic places in the world to build.

Your first project together, Hotel on Rivington, opened in 2004. What about that process stuck with you while designing The Nolitan seven years later?

MG: We learned a lot about the marriage of creating a space that’s driven by aesthetics with certain other realities.

AP: Like how a hotel actually works.

MG: A hotel is always putting its best foot forward for each new guest, but it gets a lot of wear and tear. For The Nolitan, we tried to pick a palette of elemental materials, both interior and exterior — like glass, terracotta, wood, ceramic tile, and exposed concrete — that develop a patina and richness instead of just looking shabby over time.

Hotel on Rivington pioneered the Lower East Side’s current incarnation. With The Nolitan, you have designed another “first” for the neighborhood. How did its environs (and restrictions) influence your design?

MG: Kenmare Street is a unique part of NoLIta because unlike its more intimate blocks — Elizabeth, Mott, and Mulberry — Kenmare was an industrial thoroughfare, basically a truck route.

AP: To get to Jersey.

MG: The Nolitan replaced a surface parking lot. We were trying to provide architectural connective tissue between a beautiful neighborhood that has essentially been bifurcated by Kenmare Street.

AP: We also really tried to consider the scale and how we proportioned the building. There’s a lot of 25-footers in the neighborhood, but our site had a 98 feet of frontage on Kenmare alone.

MG: We didn’t want to make the hotel too monolithic, so we broke down the bulk by splitting it into two volumetric sections that still use similar materials.

What aspect of The Nolitan satisfies you the most now that it’s here and built?

MG: We were really conscious of the exposure during the design process. Northern light is beautiful, but it can also be melancholic so we fought for the low-iron channel glass that amplifies the light so there’s a —for lack of a better word — “happy” cast to it.

Hotel on Rivington is a super-sexy, 21-story glass tower with, shall we say, voyeuristic cues. Should we consider The Nolitan her more buttoned-up sister?

MG: At Rivington, we wanted it to feel sort of exhibitionistic, but The Nolitan is a lower rise and has more intimacy with the neighborhood.

AP: You are literally looking across into someone else’s window.

MG: So we put transparent glass panels at certain strategic sight lines — looking down Delancey Street toward the Williamsburg Bridge and another one looking up Elizabeth Street — but still have the surrounding translucent channel glass so you don’t have to choose between privacy and natural light. You can have the thrill without the risk.

The Dell’ Anima folks just opened their newest culinary venture – ellabess – in the space. What did you cook-up for them design-wise?

MG: We wanted to make a space that was sexy, convivial, and cozy at night but didn’t look like you were walking into a nightclub with the lights on during the day at breakfast.

AP: From the very beginning we were conscious of the restaurant’s DNA, from the way it sat in the building to the way it looked from across the street.

MG: Kenmare is busy with pedestrian and vehicular traffic so we dropped the dining room floor two feet below grade and put a ceramic frit on the glass so it abstracts the view — almost like you’re watching it on a screen rather than feeling like there’s a car joining you for dinner. We also designed custom furniture that can get a little bit beat up and still look good with age.

AP: And try the waffle soufflé. It’s really good.

You’ve designed loads of residential buildings, from houses to condos. Is dreaming up a hotel more fun or just another building?

MG: We don’t prefer one or the other because they really inform each other. If you design a lot of residential, you learn about the necessities that people need to feel at home, then you take that and make it more aspirational in a hospitality setting. On the other hand, when you stay in a hotel there’s a little more openness to riskier design. If you can inject that into a single family home or condo building it amps up your residential experience a little bit.

What other projects are you working on?

MG: In addition to our hospitality projects in Manhattan, we’re working on a hotel in Long Island City, Atlantic City and Panama City.

If you could design a hotel any where in the world, where would your dream location be?

MG: I have an affinity for the rockier stretches of the Mediterranean and I’d love to do a hotel somewhere like that.

AP: Hey, if that happens, I’ll be there. No complaints!

Among your office furnishings are a punching bag and a wrestling mat. Is designing a hotel really that frustrating?

MG: (Laughing) Architecture is certainly a career you should only go into if you’re passionate about it. With passion comes frustration and with frustration you need to have an outlet.

So who wins in a match, architecturally speaking or otherwise?

AP: It’s a draw. We have complimentary skill sets and perspectives so there are no losers.

Like this feature? Subscribe to our RSS or follow us on Tumblr, Facebook or Twitter.