Hotel Bardo
The debut of a new brand
Historic Savannah, Georgia
2023
The remaking of a vibrant hotel set in a romanesque mansion alongside the grandest park in the historic center of America’s most beguiling city, our renovation for the Hotel Bardo—the launch of a new luxury brand—was an exercise in not spoiling a good thing. As it opens in phases, starting with the St. Bibiana restaurant in September of 2023, we have a moment to share the project as a neat case study in our process of design.
Happily for our team, the project has a long list of influences that constrain and inspire. We think of them in terms of a few categories, or determinants: market, site and culture. These invariably all blur together along the way, but are helpful for explaining motivations and decisions throughout the sort of big collaborative design process that was required by the Bardo. For this project we were defining a new brand, renovating an historic property, and carefully expanding the existing architecture in an effort to help the site reach it’s full potential.
Bar Bibi, a poolside pavilion that’s a hub of gathering, drinks and food for the new gardens
Our pattern language
For the site—which was largely existing architecture—our work involved surgically fitting new program elements in and around existing structures which were mostly left alone. Elements like the courtyard conservatory, Bar Bibi pavilion, pool, lawn and Carriage House worked to organize and extend the linear procession of spaces that begins at the front door of the hotel.
If the everyday Savannah historic mansion has a grand arrival, a series of living rooms, and then gives way to a cozy backyard oasis, then the old hotel was just missing its backyard. To fix that, we introduced a series of spaces that brought both a sense of social generosity and playful classical design, the holy grail of any city hotel experience, an “urban resort” derived from the traditions of its hometown.
On both sides of the new pool, the fantasy version of a Bull St. backyard delivers the oasis experience for hotel guests and visitors.
Kicking off the party
The fabled heart of the property is the old Kayton Mansion building, the original 1880’s structure that works beautifully as Hotel Bardo’s main restaurant, Saint Bibiana, with very little modification needed other than the room after room of custom furnishings.
With an old residential style of separated rooms in the mansion building, our goal became creating moments that both distinguished and linked together the different spaces. The main arrival hall, the largest but also most heavily trafficked of areas, needed a strong centerpiece that could hold its own among all the commotion of a “keeping room” like this one. We created this bar element to be a visual waypoint, tying together adjacent dining areas spatially, to serve as a mixologist battle-station, and of course just to be a charming place to sit and enjoy an expertly made cocktail.
Intuition and vernacular
On one hand our redesigns are firmly rooted in tradition, with familiar Savannah vernacular elements like natural fiber caning, brass details and oak construction in the furnishings. Still, with the “riot clash” tradition of mixing historical design styles in mind, we felt at ease starting with our mildly classical language of details and venturing into more modern forms and tonal color palettes.
In the guest rooms, which have over thirty variations as they meander through the ins and outs of the old building, the color tones keep the peace along with friendly curves that add a sense of relaxed modernity to the cozy spaces.
Then in other spaces, like the Club Bardo rooms above Saint Bibiana, the celebration of juxtaposition comes more to the fore, with every room its own collection of color and pattern.
It takes a village
From the early market research trips with Culinary Task Force, to the collaborations between our Thailand and US-based design teams, to the Thai artist-fabricated furniture and objects, the Bardo project naturally knit together a global collection of experts and creators, a nice parallel to the cosmopolitan mix of influences that makes up modern Savannah. We were especially happy to see how early work on key brand language, led by our Thailand-based designers, endured through rounds of revisions to find its way into the latest iterations of Bardo brand messaging.
More Bardo
Hotel Bardo Savannah - the official website
Saint Bibiana restaurant on Insta
The project is announced, 2022 - Sleeper Magazine