PLAY Midtown TLV

PLAY HOTEL MIDTOWN TLV won the 2022 LIV Hospitality design awards – Interior Design Hotel – Midscale & Lifestyle

The young and aspiring, Israel Canada Hotels, have lunched earlier this year a hotel project across four separate buildings in the Midtown Complex in Tel Aviv. Midtown is a unique mixed-use project in Israel that contains commercial space, residential space, offices, hotel, as well as municipal functions such as kindergartens for the growing local community.

Play Hotel includes 115 rooms alongside the lobby, restaurant, rooftop and business lounge that are connected to an underground commercial floor (also planned by Dana Oberson Architects). The commercial floor is planned to connect to the Midtown underground train station. The location of the hotel is within a complex that combines both commercial functions as well as recreation and leisure.  Hotel guests are allowed to enjoy collaborations between a variety of businesses:  The Mayson Kaiser bakery, a challenging climbing wall, Zappa live music clubs, and a tattoo parlor whose tattoo menu is part of the hotel’s room service menu.

The hotel’s name, PLAY, was chosen in the beginning phases of the project, when hotel’s concept and target audience were formulized. The design concept and branding were developed alongside studio BRAVE. The hotel name came about from its purpose, that being geared towards millennial business people. This is the first generation who grew up in the digital age, adapting easily to new technologies. The generation is defined by having an entrepreneurial spirit, working remote and flexible hours, being more involved in sports, and appreciating pleasure and quality of life. “Mixed-use is not only an urban definition, but also defines the daily routines of business people of this age group” says architect Oded Livyatan, partner and manager at Dana Oberson Architects LTD. “The hotel’s target audience expect that business and pleasure will be interwoven with one another, and naturally integrated within the workspace, as well as the living space and recreation. This is the most important idea when speaking about an urban hotel in a complex such as Midtown.

“When we received the project from Israel Canada Hotels, we began by forming a narrative around the people who come to stay in the hotel” says Livyatan. “Instead of designing a room type, we began by creating a story of three potential future guests. For each “type” of guest, we formed a specific concept with its unique material and color pallet.

Most of the hotel rooms (79 out of 115) were defined as “Players”, for the businesspersons of the Millennial generation, high tech workers, and Generation Z.  The rooms are designed in a dramatic and meticulous style, yet daring, and most importantly different than other business hotels in large and well-known hotel chains. The room is an accommodating space with a working station, made up of an innovative color and material pallet that is both relevant and eclectic.

The Player rooms range from super compacted rooms to large and spacious rooms. The Player’s slogan is “Work Hard, Play Hard,” and preserving this atmosphere is an integral part of the design. In some of the rooms you can find a punching bag, while in others a treadmill or drinking bar. Business meetings can be in integrated with entertainment in the room. It is evident that a lot of thought was brought forth combining irregular elements that we’re not used to seeing in rooms. The businesspersons who arrive chooses the equipment and facilities available to these rooms at their disposal.

The materials that were chosen for Player’s room come from the business world from the past. For example, the wood from the cigar box combines with current materials such as the purple leather of the bed, the contemporary photography, and the use of exposed concrete alongside black parquet floors. In the bathrooms, there are metro tiles from Diesel, that look like metal, and give a dramatic and smokey effect. In order to make use of the significant height in some of the spaces, the carpentry gets to a certain height and the metalwork continues up until closer to the ceiling. Inside the metalwork contains artwork or décor that correspond with the concept.

The Explorer room is geared towards travelers from all over the world, who came to explore the city through walking, and who want to explore tourist destinations outside of the city which require accessible public transport.

For rooms designed for the explorer combine old and new Florentine-chic alongside one another. The room’s flooring includes rough aged parquet, corrugate sheet metal beside terrazzo, natural blackened iron and a saturated yellow that reminds us of Midtown’s branding. The graphic wallpaper highlights urban Tel Avivian scenes, working together with the lighting fixtures that are replicas of streetlamps and other items collected from flea markets. The combination of industrial and eclectic materials gives off a feeling that the person staying in the room also designed it, taking inspiration from the nearby streets and previous travels. Some of the Explorer rooms are built as duplexes with galleries, fitting for a couple, four or even six people comfortably, in an atmosphere of a friends’ loft.

The term PLAY translates to both play and show. There are rooms overlooking the central piazza through the huge screen windows, exactly where the question arises: What is the stage of the show, the piazza or the hotel rooms?

The Lover rooms are couples’ suites with an attached balcony, that have a private jacuzzi with surrounding vegetation. These rooms are more intimate, inspired from the romantic parts of the city. For the Lover, we collaborated with an artist from Fiverr, who developed with us a colorful and geometric pattern used on the Formica in the room. From this, we drew the colors and textiles for the room” says Livyatan. “We wanted the room to be very different in its design. Couples will come and stay before their wedding, or couples who just come for the night, and are looking for a different design, that is both urban and current.”

The design theme of the main lobby, corridors and public spaces connects the three different room types together. The public spaces are eclectic, and the materials chosen are bold: Terazzo with yellow stone, teak wood, Carrara marble and green stone. In the main lobby, there is a ceiling made up of tiles with letters, like in Scrabble. Above the bar, there is a unique and solid element from steel coming down from the ceiling, that gives off the feeling that some of the letters have fallen or are falling.

The public spaces in the hotel make room for collaboration with artists that evoke the term PLAY, and for that create art in the public space. Among them is the graffiti artist BINSKY, who drew on the concrete walls and round columns in the hotel. Video-art artists screen their work in the public spaces alongside the artwork of local artists. All of these create an extra layer that is very relevant to the design concept of the hotel.

Interior Design and planning: Dana Oberson Architects
Lead Architects: Lior Leitner & Oded Livyatan
Planning Team: Arch. Dana Oberson, Arch. Oded Livyatan, Arch. Lior Leitner, Dana Keshet
Lighting Design: Tzach Cohen Lighting
Branding: Studio BRAVE
Entrepreneur: Israel Canada Hotels
Architecture and permits: Moshe Tzur, Rachel Avraham
Contractor: Rom Geves
Carpentry and metalwork: Pitaro together with Creapen-BK Group
Project manager: Yaron Levy / Ronen Haliva
Artwork in rooms: Vered Rozen
Graffiti: BINSKY
Photographer: Amit Geron
Styling for Photos: Adva Hofstein