Philippe Starck and Ennismore, alongside Real Estate group Pichet, open a 97-room five-star hotel in the heart of Bordeaux’s historic Chartrons neighbourhood, the Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes housed in the former Calvet wine cellars and boasting a spa with swimming pool and fitness area, as well as a Japanese-inspired bar and restaurant.
Built in 1871 and extended ten years later by architect Charles Brun in neo-Gothic style, the property features 13 crenellated bays framing the main entrance and a gable bearing the United Kingdom’s coat of arms set above the arched doorway. A hub for the wine trade, two centuries later in 1996, a fire would destroy the cellars and some 100 years worth of grands crus classés. Fast forward to 2018, and the Pichet family entrusted the property to world-famous creator Philippe Starck who, alongside Jean-François Le Gal of architecture firm Advento, renovated the notable façade and has created what today is the seductive Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes.
“The Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes is a château built with high-quality stones and brickworks of elegance, where you live more because you are loved and cared for,” explains Starck. “Here is real life, the fertile one that always evolves and thrives on encounters — and often the most unlikely become the most likely. It is no longer a possibility but a certainty that the Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes is our necessity.”
Sophisticated, unique, and born of a purely French spirit, guests will relax in luxury and socialise in style, the hotel a cosmopolitan place that combines the old and new and nods to both the east and the west.
Guest rooms are also designed by Starck and are intimate cocoons bathed in soft, harmonious light. Priority has been given to noble, natural materials — leather seats, wooden doors, boiled wool curtains — and to earthy colours, as well as to clean, essential lines, particularly in the bathrooms. Several rooms and suites open onto private terraces planted with luxuriant greenery.
Bringing the Morimoto experience to Bordeaux, chef Masaharu Morimoto’s restaurant presents a blend of Asian and French flavours designed to take diners on a unique culinary journey. The Hiroshima-born chef draws on inspiration from Japanese tradition and innovative culinary techniques to create a surprising and refined cuisine, creating a menu that includes maki, sushi, sashimi and his signature dishes such as lacquered duck, alongside oysters from the Arcachon Basin.
More than a hotel, Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes is a blueprint for contemporary travel. Ageing like a fine wine, Philippe Starck’s ability to conjure a hotel design that truly inspires is as potent as ever.
@mondrianbordeaux
@starck
@ennismore
Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes Photography, Gaëlle Le Boulicaut.
