What happens when you pool several creative minds into one space and allow them design freedom? Wanderlust Hotel happens. As its name implies, the hotel was conceptualised to stimulate guests’ curiosity and sense of adventure. To do so, each floor is handed to a different design firm where they are given the freedom to dream up the unique and unexpected. Moving through the hotel’s space, every level is a surprise and a singular experience exclusive to Wanderlust Hotel.

Once a school ground for Hong Wen school in the 1920s and then a shop house located in the culturally rich Little India enclave, the well-conserved four-storey hotel façade radiates with old world charm. Within the property, it features three types of guestrooms – 11 capsule rooms on the second storey, nine mid-sized rooms on the third storey and nine loft rooms on the fourth storey.

DPD on the third storey

We were tasked with conceptualising the third floor of the hotel. Taking inspiration from its historical context, we playfully reinvented the space so that its aesthetics is at once a delightful pull of colonial nuances and push of modern charm.

This begins with a black corridor lit by glowing, white neon signs that lead to nine stark white rooms.

Move to the other corridor and you will find “Origami” rooms. These rooms were so coined because they feature undulating, faceted ceilings which give their users a sense of being nestled within the folds of a sheet of paper.