Brussels' Mix Hotel opens in the former headquarters of La Royale Belge

For a snapshot of Belgian design at its best, those in Brussels would do well to stop by Mix Hotel a new ‘hospitality hub’ in the south side of the city. Here, Belgian designer Lionel Jadot has transformed a functionalist office building into a destination, complete with a hotel, three restaurants, co-working space and a gym – all kitted out with bespoke design.

Lionel Jadot on designing Mix Hotel: ‘I work like a film director’

Adamant that Mix would not feature catalogue-bought pieces or cookie-cutter styles, Jadot’s mission was to create everything from scratch, from curtains and door handles to lighting and furniture. His first stop was Zaventem Ateliers, the modern-day crafts guild that he founded in 2018, on the outskirts of Brussels. He invited all 24 Zaventem makers to design a piece of their choice for Mix.

‘I work like a film director,’ he says (it’s true; he has made films in the past). ‘I cast my designers like actors, and they interpret my words as they want.’ It’s also true that the imposing cross-shaped building, created in the 1960s by architects René Stapels and Pierre Dufau, is not short of drama. Jadot took its copper-clad auditorium and sweeping, circular staircase as inspiration, along with ‘the shapes, the concrete, the metal, the wood to create a language that informed all the interior design’.

Beyond Zaventem, Jadot scouted out a further 26 artisans to collaborate on Mix. A prerequisite was that they were Belgian, had their own workshops and shared Jadot’s ethos of working with recycled elements and repurposed materials. As a sixth-generation member of furniture-making family, Jadot spent his childhood in his father’s workshop before taking over the business aged 19. For more than 20 years, he has created bespoke interiors for private clients and hospitality projects, from Café Flora and Wolf Food Market (both in Brussels) to the new Jam Hotel in Lisbon.

A locally made hotel

In a bid to eliminate waste and generate a circular economy, many renovation leftovers have been reused in Mix. Take the recycled plastic skirting, all 6km of it, or the screens in the co-working spaces (which can be rented by the hour) made from plastic cable tubing. As well as using local materials and makers, Jadot also adopted a fairer fee structure, eliminating the middle man (himself) so that each designer invoiced the hotel owner directly. Most of Zaventem Atelier’s artisans are small-scale, with a maximum of three people, and for the 25,000 sq m Mix, they had to upscale massively.

Another fitting example of this approach is French artist Roxane Lahidji (based at Zaventem Ateliers), whose brief was to create more than 200 lamps for the bedrooms and lobby, which she made from a salt composite harvested from the Rhone delta. ‘Mix pushed her and her process further. She had to hire more staff and organise workshops to get to this level of production,’ says Jadot, clearly pleased with the results of the challenges he set her.

He adds: ‘Normally with a project of this size, the designer orders maybe 1,000 chairs from China because they are cheap. The chairs arrive by boat, which takes months. At Mix, the idea was to create a locally made collection. Everything is listed, everything is signed, so my client has a huge selection of collectible design.’ Diners, gym members and hotel guests who fall in love with pieces (and who can resist the chairs in the Fox food hall by Custom Cut or the lights by Studio Elementaires?) can commission them, and should Mix’s owners ever want to redesign the space in the future, they can auction everything off and start again.

The scale of Mix and the breadth of original design within it is mind-boggling, and that Jadot could fulfil such a challenging brief in just two and a half years is a testament to both his talents and his strong connections to the Belgian design scene. ‘Co-ordinating 50 designers, keeping my client’s trust because there were no visuals, or catalogues to look at, yeah it was a bit crazy,’ he laughs. ‘But everybody worked so well together and understood the power of the project. We were a great cast.’

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mixbrussels.com