Young Designers Conceive New Image for Santiago de Cuba

REX Hotel and future Imperial Hotel are some of the most important projects that speak of the professionalism of ADECO group.

Click on Santiago de Cuba: A City of 500 Years

Its main mission aims at the design of interior spaces, a subject that tries to gain momentum in the half-a-century-old Santiago, since over the years it has been pushed into the background by the needs.

Alejandro Soto, head of the team, explains that when it comes to designing customers from different sectors – commerce, hotel, tourism, public health and gastronomy – must have two elements for sure: what they want and the list of requirements. The wish list outlines the way customers want to develop the project, according to their needs. All of these elements define solutions in terms of space, style, color and formal and aesthetic aspects.

Many people think that it’s all about painting a wall and hanging a picture, Alejandro says and confesses that designing is far more complex than that. Customers’ needs are the starting point.

“It can be a space like Rex Hotel, for instance, with heritage values, but we worked on its space by applying a minimalist and contemporary approach. We didn’t try to copy the encapsulated concept of a 1950s hotel.”

The designers that make up this team underline that the works must respect such venerable elements as “the Office of the Provincial Government President, which features a refined style. Those codes related to the building’s construction date are to be taken into account even in terms of the signals.”

In the case of the Imperial Hotel the idea is the same: not to reproduce an 80-year-old hotel. “Conserving the façade and architectural values is very important, but within the hotel guests should have space to move between two ages, the period when the building was opened and a state-of-the-art concept.”

When it comes to defining the inner design – members of the group explain – we think about a commercial design that divides areas and specifies what those areas are going to be used for. For instance, in a hotel we must be told that a son-dedicated bar is set to be established in this space, the restaurant will recreate the 1950 decade or the discotheque will have a futuristic theme.

According to that first idea, we try to adapt colors, shapes, illumination. It’s not only about the primary illumination of the space, but the secondary focused on the intention of generating environments.

La Polimita, Café Santiago, Foto Club, Caracol, Salón del Son and even the refined Zun Zun restaurant are some of the places that have found a new aesthetic by the hand of these young designers.