Why We Built an 80s Office in the Sky

The last beautiful office

There was a stretch of the twentieth century — call it the long 1980s — when a serious office was supposed to be a beautiful room. Dark wood. Warm metal. A good chair you could lean back in and think. A bar cart in the corner and a window over the city. Then the open-plan grey arrived, and we spent thirty years working under fluorescent light at desks we'd never choose for our homes.

The Presidential Suite is, unapologetically, a vote for the other way.

Not a costume

We didn't want a theme hotel or a nostalgia act. The Suite is a genuinely modern, comfortable place to stay and to work — fast internet, a real bed, air conditioning, a proper kitchen. What it borrows from the eighties is the conviction that the room should be as considered as the work you do in it.

So the walls are dark lacquered mahogany you can see your reflection in. The metal is brass, everywhere the light lands. The green is emerald, which has always read as quiet money. And the centrepiece is a working machine: a six-screen desk that would suit a trading floor, set against a wall of glass.

The eighties got one thing exactly right: a room you want to be in makes you better at what you do in it.

Why it works now

There's a practical case underneath the romance. People do their best work surrounded by things they find beautiful, in a room that feels like theirs. A founder closing a round, an editor cutting a film, a creator building a set — all of them work better here than in a beige business suite by the airport. And when the day is done, the same room pours a drink and shows you the city.

That's the whole idea, and it's why we built it. If you want to see how the materials come together, the design story walks through the room; if you want to know what it's like to actually work here, the six-screen desk is the place to start.