We're accustomed to glamour in London SE26: Kelly Brook and Jason Statham used to live above the dentist. But when Anouska Hempel's heels hit the cracked cement of the parking space outside my flat, it's hard not to think of those Picture Post photographs of royalty visiting bombed-out families during the second world war. Her mission in my modest tract of suburbia is, however, about more than offering sympathy. Hempel—the woman who invented the boutique hotel before it bore any such proprietary name—has come to give me information for which, judging by the spreads in interiors magazines and anxious postings on online DIY forums, half the property-owners in the Western world seem desperate: how to give an ordinary home the look and the vibe of a five-star, £750-a-night hotel suite. To Hempelise, in this case, a modest conversion flat formed from the middle slice of a three-storey Victorian semi.
"You could do it," she says, casting an eye around my kitchen. "Anyone could do it. Absolutely no reason why not. But there has to be continuity between the rooms. A single idea must be followed through." She looks out wistfully over the fire escape. "And you'd have to buy the house next door, of course." That's a joke. I think.
...
It's worth pausing, though, to consider the oddness of this impulse. The hotel room is an amnesiac space. We would be troubled if it bore any sign of a previous occupant, particularly as many of us go to hotels in order to do things we would not do at home. We expect a hotel room to be cleaned as thoroughly as if a corpse had just been hauled from the bed. (In some cases, this will actually have happened.) The domestic interior embodies the opposite idea: it is a repository of memories. The story of its inhabitants ought to be there in the photos on the mantelpiece, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves. If hotel rooms were people, they would be smiling lobotomy patients or plausible psychopaths. | 对于伦敦 SE26 地区(译者注:英国邮政区域,系指西德纳姆地区及水晶宫之一部分)的独特魅力,我们早已习以为常:牙医的楼上曾经住着凯莉•布鲁克 (Kelly Brook) 和杰森•斯坦森 (Jason Statham)。不过,当安诺斯佳•亨佩尔 (Anouska Hempel) 的高跟鞋敲击着我所住公寓外面停车位中裂开的水泥地面时,却很难让人不想起当年《图画邮报》(Picture Post) 中关于王公贵族们参观那些在二战期间惨遭战火损毁的房屋时的照片。然而,面对我这地处郊区、简朴无华的房间,她的任务可不只是表示同情。亨佩尔,这位首创时装酒店之理念,继而使时装装酒店成为任何此类酒店专用名称的女人,告诉我一个惊人的想法:如何将一套普通的家居房改造成外观和氛围均与每晚价格高达 750 英镑的五星级酒店相仿?根据室内装潢杂志中洋洋洒洒的长篇大论和在线 DIY(自己动手做)论坛中热情洋溢、翘首以盼的帖子来看,在西方世界,有半数房产业主都有这样的梦想。在这里,要进行亨佩尔式改造的是一套简朴的套房,这套房是由一套三层维多利亚风格的半独立式住宅的中部改建而成的。 “您可以做到这一点,”她瞟了一眼我的厨房,说道,“谁都可以做到。绝对没有任何理由做不到。但房间与房间之间必须是连通的。必须坚持一个思路。”她眺望了一下消防梯,惆怅地说道。“当然,您得买下隔壁那套房。”这是个玩笑,我想。 ... 然而,这样疯狂的奇思妙想还是值得我们停下来深思。酒店房间是用来消遣开怀的。如果房间里遗留下任何前顾客的痕迹,人们可能会感到不安,尤其是,许多人去酒店是为了做不愿在家做的事情。人们总是希望酒店房间能够得到尽可能彻底的清洁,就像刚刚从床上移走一具尸体一样。(有时,这种情况还真的发生过。)而家居型室内装修的思路则恰恰与此相反:它应该是记忆的长廊,那里应该以壁炉台上的照片、墙上的图画或是书架上的图书等各种形式留下居住者的生活印记。如果把酒店房间比作人,那么,他们应该是做过脑白质切除手术、始终保持微笑的患者,或是巧舌如簧、谈笑自若的精神变态患者。
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