{"id":115706,"date":"2017-09-24T14:14:35","date_gmt":"2017-09-24T14:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/projects\/deborah-berke-partners-designs-seventh-21c-museum-hotels-outpost-in-nashville\/"},"modified":"2022-11-10T17:22:46","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T22:22:46","slug":"deborah-berke-partners-designs-seventh-21c-museum-hotels-outpost-in-nashville","status":"publish","type":"id_project","link":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/projects\/deborah-berke-partners-designs-seventh-21c-museum-hotels-outpost-in-nashville\/","title":{"rendered":"Deborah Berke Partners Designs Seventh 21C Museum Hotels Outpost in Nashville"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n

Consider the designer-client relationship <\/span>as a kind of romance. You have to understand the difference between a fling, on the one hand, and a flirtation that has the potential to become something more serious. Interior Design<\/em> Hall of Fame<\/a> member Deborah Berke<\/a> got acquainted with the co-founders
of the art-centric 21C Museum Hotels<\/a>, Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson<\/a>, while transforming a series of warehouses in their hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, into the boutique hotel chain’s debut property. That first date, if you will, then blossomed into a full-blown love affair. Over the past decade, both before and after Berke became dean of the Yale School of Architecture<\/a>, the couple have turned to Deborah Berke Partners<\/a> for every subsequent outpost. The latest to open, number seven,
is in Nashville.<\/span><\/p>\n

> Project Resources<\/a><\/strong>
<\/span><\/p>\n

Brown, whose family controls the corporate parent of Jack Daniel’s whiskey and Finlandia vodka, and Wilson, a former event planner, have been serious contemporary-art collectors since the 1990’s. When they went into the hotel business, they decided to focus on smaller cities, ones that might not have their own Museum of Modern Art. Across the South and Midwest, 21C Museum Hotels<\/a> have now multiplied like mini MoMAs, and the couple happily fill their ever expanding supply of wall space, with help from a full-time curator. Pieces from the corporate collection rotate through the properties in the form of traveling exhibitions that attract local visitors as well, bringing vitality to emerging neighborhoods. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alert to the popularity of the hotels and their art programs, real-estate developers have beaten a path to Brown and Wilson’s office, seeking to bring an outpost of the chain to more cities. The proposal for Nashville centered on a location near downtown nightlife. The building was old though not historical. “George Washington did not sleep here,” Berke jokes. More specifically, it’s a redbrick structure from 1900 that originally contained storefronts and a warehouse for a hardware company. Still, sensitive to the potential for poetry in straightforward, honest commercial architecture, she and principal Terrence Schroeder<\/a>—who has worked on every 21C Museum Hotel— were respectful and contextual.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"