Hotel owner and developer Gordon Campbell Gray cares about how things look. He hates pretension or useless frills. He describes the design of his upscale London hotel, One Aldwych, as contemporary laced with classicism. Whatever he calls it, it works, and appeals both to visitors--who keep occupancy rates at over 90%--and to design critics, who have honored it with two major international design awards, including AA Hotel of the Year for England this year.  

Owner�s eye on every detail

�The design of the hotel is sleek and contemporary. I like to think of it as a modern classic, but definitely not trendy or a look which is purely of the moment. I wanted it to have gravitas, while at the same time to feel truly modern and exciting,� says Campbell Gray. In creating the design philosophy and interiors, Campbell Gray worked with British interior designer Mary Fox-Linton. His eye has been on every detail, even to choosing the teaspoons used in the hotel�s three restaurants: Axis, an elegant fine-dining restaurant; Indigo, for light meals; and the Cinnamon Bar, a quick-and-healthy takeout café that serves gourmet sandwiches, pastries and designer coffee. 

�The hotel is really about �stealth wealth� rather than the �dripping deluxe� that is traditionally associated with grand hotels,� Campbell Gray explains. �We wanted to pare back the superfluous trappings of luxury, which now seem dated and unnecessary, and concentrate on what really makes a hotel work. It�s all about service.�  

Campbell Gray bought his first hotel in 1982, now called The Feathers, in Woodstock, England. Other hotels followed, including the Draycott in London and the Maidstone Arms in East Hampton, Long Island in New York. After returning to London from New York he decided to redefine what a modern luxury hotel should be, so he set off on a trip around the world, staying in five-star luxury hotels and spas and taking notes along the way. 

Early in 1996 he bought one of London�s finest Edwardian buildings on Aldwych at Strand, between the City and the West End. Designed in 1907 by the Anglo-French partnership of Mewes and Davis, who also designed the Ritz hotels in London and Paris, the building, first occupied by the <I>Morning Post</I> and later called Inveresk House, had aged gracefully. The elegant decorative details on the Louis Seize exterior have been retained, as well as the external ironwork on the windows. The building has such a strong, classic exterior that finding a sleek contemporary setting when you step in the door is a surprise, but a surprise that pleases. 

Not �an inch of chintz� to be found

Campbell Gray prides himself that the hotel hasn�t �an inch of chintz� in sight. The sleek furniture designs, which were created for the hotel, and the plain fabrics serve as an appealing backdrop for the more than 300 contemporary works of art he collected himself.  The first work visitors see on entering the lobby is a sculpture of a large Neanderthal-like male figure rowing an almost-lifesize rowboat, his oars swung high in the air. It makes you want to cheer him but also makes you instinctively step out of the way.

The lobby is impressive in itself. Double-height windows and dark oak paneling stand as reminders of the past, set off by a contemporary steel mesh wall sparkles with fiber optic lighting. 
 

The Lobby Bar is to one side, open to general lobby seating, where guests sit and sip in high-backed Chinese style chairs. Other art includes a large bronze bust by the British sculptor Andre Wallace and a surprising assemblage, hanging in the Indigo restaurant:  pieces of burned toast set in wax, titled �Toast Today.� In general, the sculptures chosen are large, bold and imposing, while the original works on paper or canvas are more cerebral and subdued.    Everywhere there are simple shapes with unusual fabrics. In Indigo, which overlooks the lobby, the armchairs from Holland are covered in chenille and have banners of indigo fabric flowing from their backs. In the elegant Axis restaurant below the main floor, the decor is a reference to the 1920s and 30s, with one wall dominated by a full-height mural, �Secret City,� by British artist Richard Walker. The banquettes and chairs are black leather, which is not unusual, but the bar overlooking the restaurant has a leather floor, which is.

The Lobby Bar, open to the lobby, features high-backed Chinese seating One Aldwych�s pool has an underwater sound system and is finished with bright blue Bugatti tiles

The hotel has 105 guestrooms and suites, including two with their own fitness equipment, an option that appeals to guests like Cher and singer Tracy Chapman, who stay here when in London. The rooms are each different, several with one curved wall. All have feather beds with crisp Frette linen duvet covers and heavy Jim Thompson Thai shot silk drapes in a solid color falling to the floor at each window. Rooms follow five color themes: smoke blue, sage green, Hidcote lavender, sunset red and honey beige. The bathrooms have polished chestnut brown Terrazzo stone classic freestanding round basins with Philippe Starck lever taps.

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Even the Health Club makes a design statement. It has an 18-meter lap pool, with an underwater sound system, tiled in bright Bugatti blue tiles. Norwegian slate covers the floor and the overall color scheme is blue, yellow and steel. 

Campbell Gray�s design vision celebrates the subtle. �One Aldwych is subtle because I was determined to avoid the design clichés of the predictable �international deluxe� style and to resist the temptation to be relentlessly fashionable. One Aldwych is contemporary, but definitely not trendy,� he concludes. 

Judy Wylie ([email protected]) is a Santa Cruz, California-based business and travel journalist.