Blow Up Hall 50 50: An Inhabitable Work Of Art

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It’s not the perfect hotel room, but it does make for a great story when you get back home.  The Blow Up Hall 50 50 is a themed luxury hotel, where guests become participants in an odd digital art experience.

Located halfway between Berlin and Warsaw, the concept-driven hotel is as much a place to stay as it is an inhabitable work of art.  It is built around a focal installation by Polish electronic artist Rafael Lozano Hemmer – 2,400 scrambled CCTV images of hotel guests going about their business (as caught on real-time hidden cameras) displayed prominently in an interactive collage in the hotel lobby.

Forget about picking a room – in the Blow Up Hall 50 50, the rooms choose you.  When you make a reservation,  you get presented with a choice of three colors, three pictures and three numbers.  Your choices will determine your spirit animal, at  which point the appropriate room will be booked.  There’s a big element of humor in the process, making the whole thing an experience from the time you book to the time you check out.  When your spirit animal is a zebra, for instance, you get the black-and-white-striped zebra lounge.  If your chosen spirit animal turns out to be an accountant, you get the drab and highly-conventional king-sized suite.

Room keys, as it turns out, are too conventional for such a work of wonder.  Guests are, instead, handed iPhones that are pre-configured with recognition technology to show them to their rooms (you’ll need it because rooms are not numbered).  All amenities, from in-room broadband to food, can be accessed via the touchscreen interface on the handset.

All guests get free fruits delivered to the room upon arrival, along with complimentary non-alcoholic drinks in each mini-bar. Prices for the unforgettable stay begin at €316 a night.

[Blow Up Hall via Sherman’s Travel]