Warren Street Hotel

Often, designers pride themselves on developing a signature of formulaic excellence—an aesthetic vision that is crafted to be both impeccable and impeccably replicable—cohesive at every level, from charger plates to baseboards.

Kit Kemp Design Studio’s predisposition for eclectic thoughtfulness and hospitable worldbuilding goes beyond this aesthetic compliance. For Kemp, cohesion comes from contrast rather than formula. Bespoke elements relate, they don’t necessarily match.

The vision for Warren Street Hotel, in particular, was to push boundaries of playful colour in a way that feels slightly novel for Lower Tribeca. In plein air painting, it is a known principle that “repetition flattens.” It is better to brush a stroke of colour and leave it, than to brush over it and muddle the composition. Kemp’s design team does not repeat, thus they do not flatten.

Throughout its 69 signature rooms and lively common spaces, Warren Street Hotel boasts over 700 pieces of specially commissioned art and craft. The result is meticulous and measured, yet utterly distinct in each environment. Embellished, vibrant and unexpected, guests expect whimsy and come to delight in its surprise.

After memorable stays at The Crosby, one might be curious about this new Kempian universe, the third and latest Firmdale property in Manhattan. Venturing down Greenwich Street, one would likely find oneself listening to the live jazz quartet and taking in one’s surroundings at the hotel bar, which, for lovers of odds and ends, is a fruitful menagerie. Savouring the bespoke, here, design relies on intelligence and storytelling that lives in the smallest details.

Kemp’s design team tells of the tactile nature of many of the decorative items, and how considerations of ambiance include the sensory and textural feel of the artisanal objects themselves: a turned wood baluster column, thick-waisted and slightly worn at the base; wicker vessels stacked in a totem, the weave of which catches the light in gradients; a linen lampshade over a carved wooden base, with an air of having been salvaged from a different time and place.

Rather than accessorise, these objects evoke. Their details have the British sensibility that so often turns Firmdale projects into miniature oases of calm within New York City. Their textures and shapes are variegated, intriguing and a bit archival. Brushes have checkerboard bristles. Custom botanical textiles and woven baskets transport. Ikat and celadon curtains complement wooden bird houses. Studs adorn headboards whose dramatic shapes are not of this century.

This is a place that resists the tyranny of coordination, all while serving afternoon tea.