T+L Design Awards 2009

Design Champion
André Balazs

Combining old-school glamour and unfussy modern design, André Balazs’s hotels achieve a rare alchemy: they are warm and welcoming and somehow nevertheless mysterious too—places with a bit of history and mythology about them. His properties are all carefully in tune with their particular locations, from the 1930’s bungalows at Chateau Marmont in Hollywood to the Art Deco lobby at the Raleigh in Miami Beach and the new Standard in New York, which rises dramatically above the High Line. It is this uncanny sense of place—expressed in architecture and design—that sets this year’s Design Champion apart, lending his hotels their cool and unpretentious sex appeal.