When the Danish graffiti legend Swet71 finished work, he actually had to swallow a bit, Sebastian Wenk admits: a spray-painted explosion in black, white and silver on all the walls of the room, including the smoke detectors and the light strips. But that’s exactly what the young hotel manager wanted: no well-designed art on the walls, coordinated with interior designers, but each of the 67 rooms is unique, an original on every wall. “The only guidelines were: no violence, no discrimination,” says Wenk.
More than 60 artists have designed the “Love Beer Urban Art Hotel” in Bayreuth, each in their own handwriting, with spray cans, brushes and paint, with collages or floor-to-ceiling cross-stitch embroidery. Realistic butterflies and abstract worlds of colour, sprayed ornaments, cryptic characters and white lines, as chiseled as Brussels lace. Not pictures that can be taken off and put on, but murals made just for the room in which they are now displayed. In the next few weeks, the QR code boards should be ready, which guests can use to call up information about the artist and the making of their room via smartphone.
Usually the wall above the bed is painted, here by the New York artist Elle, sometimes the entire room.
(Photo: Elle/Michael Bauer/Maisel & Friends/Love Beer)
And so it’s almost a pity that a hotel stay usually only includes a visit to one room, namely your own room. Luckily there is also plenty of color on the otherwise dark walls in the corridors of the building, for which two former inns from the 17th and 18th centuries were gutted, given a modern interior and connected with a new building.
The artists were brought to Bayreuth from all over the world Jasmin Siddiqui, stage name “Hera”, curator of the hotel and otherwise also busy with paint on meter-high house walls. Her trademark are the almost photorealistic eyes of her figures, which seem to seek the viewer’s gaze almost hypnotically. In addition to one room, she also used it to design the concrete walls of the lobby, a high, light room with a glass facade, a semi-circular leather sofa and a long wooden table where you can sit down for a quick breakfast or work with your laptop.
You can have breakfast in the colorful lobby or next door in the “Love Beer” restaurant.
(Photo: Michael Bauer/Maisel & Friends/Love Beer)
Those who come more often will find that the picture is still growing and is being supplemented by other artists in other styles. “I love Hidden Objects where you keep discovering new things,” says Siddiqui.
There is no traditional reception, you can check in and open the room “smartly” using a mobile app. This not only looks young, hip and urban, but is also, says the hotel manager frankly, a reaction to the lack of staff in the hotel industry.
The materials have remained traditional: oak wood and leather, plus clinker bricks on unpainted walls and a tap for infusions in the sauna – all of this refers to the location of the hotel on the Bayreuth Maisel Brewery premises. In the 1970s, the brewery had been relocated to modern facilities, and the brick buildings from the founding years at the end of the 19th century fell into a deep slumber. The site has potential, Jeff Maisel, fourth-generation boss of the family business, and Thomas Wenk, Bayreuth restaurateur and father of the Urban Art hotel boss, quickly agreed a few years ago.
Nevertheless, things were taken slowly, the existing brewery museum was gradually polished up, a brewing workshop for craft beers set up and the “Liebesbier” restaurant with a long bar, large terrace and lots of art on the walls. The hotel followed, heated by the waste heat from the brewery, as did a small coffee roasting plant. Wenk also has ideas for the buildings that are still empty, he could imagine a bar on the roof of the old malt house or a co-working space – “let’s see what else we can think of”.
There is already a plan for the Villa Maisel, the former home of the brewing family: Apartments with a small kitchenette are to be built there by autumn of next year, as a more spacious alternative to the rooms in the Urban Art Hotel. And outside, the Parisian street artist Julien Malland, aka Seth Globepainter, is already standing on the scaffolding, painting two of his always somewhat melancholic child figures on the facade.
Children’s figures are the typical motif of the Parisian street artist Julien Malland aka Seth Globepainter, who designed the facade of the Villa Maisel.
(Photo: Eva Dignös)
Dissected on a house wall with paint and a pointed brush – this is how the Viennese artist Nychos sees the Margravine Wilhelmine of Bayreuth.
(Photo: Eva Dignös)
All this doesn’t seem to fit the always somewhat heavyweight image of Bayreuth, the city of Wagner – until you make your way towards the old town, which is only a short walk away. Lo and behold, the view is obviously sharpened, at least one discovers a surprising amount of art on walls and walls. Showpieces are five facade-high street art works, all of which revolve around Margravine Wilhelmine, the art-loving sister of the Prussian King Frederick the Great, who would have loved to become Queen of England, but was then married to Bayreuth. They were painted a few years ago on the occasion of the reopening of the Margravial Opera House, a baroque gem that Wilhelmine had built in 1748 which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2012.
Richard Wagner is known to have his own opera house at the top of the Green Hill and has received significantly less space in the city when it comes to street art. Festival visitors can still consider the street art hotel without any worries: there is an iron in the cupboard, the ironing board can be folded out for a crease-free grand entrance.
Information: Liebesbier Urban Art Hotel, Andreas-Maisel-Weg 1, 95445 Bayreuth, 0921 46008020, lovebeer.dedouble room from 120 euros
Editor’s note: The research trip for this article was partly supported by tour operators, hotels, airlines and/or tourism agencies.