Sometimes you have to get out of Toronto to see what Toronto talent can do.
Item: the newest Generator hostel and hotel, where I stayed for a few nights when visiting Paris a couple of weeks ago.
Located in the densely peopled, ethnically crazy-quilt 10th arrondissement, only a few minutes by metro from the city’s centre, this addition to the pan-European Generator chain has been outfitted by Anwar Mekhayech, principal in Toronto’s DesignAgency. There are no maple leaves in Mr. Mekhayech’s busy interiors, but they feature a lot of the eclectic, thoughtfully local savvy that often characterizes Canadian creative culture when it’s running in top gear.
Enter the establishment from Place du Colonel Fabien, and you find yourself among props from more than one modern fantasy. The façade of a movie palace from the New Wave era has been evoked on the inside, for example, by spelling out the name of the hotel in bright light bulbs and hanging the marquee over the front desk. This contraption, the designer told me, is to welcome guests on a “cinematic journey, a little bit unexpected.”
Also in the lobby, an abstract glass mural of mid-20th-century vintage (salvaged from the former office building Generator occupies) adds its own retro touch to the ensemble. Ditto for the discarded streetlamps Mr. Mekhayech picked up somewhere in Paris and installed near the entrance to the elevators.
Descend to the bar – hidden, like a secret club, behind a plain black door in the raw concrete basement – and you come to another scene in the “cinematic journey.” Settle down on a stern, black-clad banquette at the edge of the dance floor, sip a mojito or caipirinha, and enjoy yet another place, like the lobby, reminiscent of a Paris that time left behind, circa 1965.
Or ascend to what the management calls the “chill-out lounge,” where the scene takes its cues from the Turkish and north-African neighbourhoods, shops and restaurants round about. If the appointment of the bar recalls a smoky underground hangout frequented by existentialists and anarchists, the brightly coloured, richly patterned rugs and upholstery here bring to mind the casbahs of Marrakesh or Algiers under the ancien régime.
The exoticism and luxury, however, is strictly on the surface. Like the bar, the lounge is built for hard wear. Its sectional sofas are just comfortable enough to nap or sit on for a while, not posh or plush enough to invite a long stay. Too, the steady drizzle of pop tunes in the large, well-windowed room makes it unlikely that guests will nestle in on a spring evening and bury themselves in the novels of Balzac to be found on the bookshelves here.
But as you may have already guessed, Generator is not meant to be a stately refuge for serious readers of French literature. Josh Wyatt, the energetic creator of the Generator brand for London-based Patron Capital, said his hostelry is pitched to “interesting travellers who are young at heart,” and “who don’t have €350 [roughly $475] for a hotel room” in central Paris.
Backpackers on a swing through Europe, take note: The cheapest of Parisian Generator’s 916 beds, located in a spacious, well-appointed eight-bunk dormitory room, costs a mere €25 ($34) a night. For guests who require more privacy, fairly normal hotel rooms (with ample ensuite bathrooms, but no television sets and only one towel per customer) rent for as little as €89 ($123). The most expensive suite – with its queen-sized bed, large private terrace and plenty of elbow room – is priced at €159, or just $218 a night.
For these modest sums, the mostly young clientele – they looked to me like American kids on a school break – get clean, basic and uncrowded accommodation, an English-speaking staff, an inexpensive restaurant on the premises (with a menu heavy on burgers and pizza), and a metro station at the front door.
And, of course, they get something not usually available in ordinary youth hostels: snappily designed, visually high-voltage interiors geared for appreciation by youthful consumers raised on a diet of digital imagery and fast-paced TV shows.
So far, Mr. Mekhayech and his Toronto colleagues have done Generators in London, Venice, Barcelona, Paris and other big European cities – Rome is coming soon – without lapsing into a one-size-fits-all style of the sort that makes the Hiltons and Sheratons of this world such bores. If there is a common thread running through all their Generator designs, it’s an attempt to make each an original response, devoid of touristy clichés, to the colours, textures, legends and cultural histories of its specific site.
DesignAgency’s Paris scheme, for example, is a brisk collage of furniture, art, crafts, wallpaper, lighting fixtures, graphic displays, textiles and much else by and about the real Parisians who are creating the look of the city day by day.
Which left me wondering: What would a Toronto Generator look like? One day, perhaps, we’ll have an answer – if Generator and DesignAgency ever get around to Hogtown, which I hope they will.