The new must-book Paris hotel with rooftop bar and Eiffel Tower views
La Fondation, Paris
Check-in
We arrive late afternoon on a Wednesday (there's no parking, so get ready to exit your Uber promptly on the street) and notice a line of people outside as we make our way through to the lounge area for a relaxed Parisian check-in. Turns out they're queuing for the rooftop bar, which is the latest place to be for a view of the Eiffel Tower with your St-Germain elderflower cocktail. The lounge area meanwhile gives a preview of the hotel's design credentials, with its retro seating, objets d'art and coffee-table tomes.
The look
We're in the 17th arrondissement, between Les Batignolles village and Parc Monceau, well off the tourist drag but within walking distance of key attractions. The main hotel is housed in a brutalist 1960s building reimagined by Paris architects PCA-Stream, with interiors by New York design studio Roman & Williams. At the rear, a former car park has been transformed into an industrial glass and steel co-working space, with a lush suspended garden plus cafe, gym, sauna and 25-metre swimming pool – there's even a climbing wall. It's all super-cool, and much patronised by locals taking advantage of the membership offering.
The room
Ah, my favourite type of hotel room. Smallish, but perfectly formed, with everything you need and nothing you don't, and a bed that feels like you're sleeping on a cloud. There's an enormous picture window that opens to the (slightly noisy) street below, a modern curved lounge and coffee table, and covetable curated artworks by the Amelie Maison d'Art gallery. The bathroom is all moss-green tiles, glass bricks, curved mirror and brass fittings, while the mini bar threatens willpower with bottled cocktails, black-truffle chips and Brebis cheese biscuits.
Food + drink
The signature restaurant on the 8th floor is yet to open during our visit, but meanwhile La Base, the all-day bistro on the ground floor, offers an impressive contemporary menu – from perfect omelettes and honeycomb-layered croissants at breakfast to a sticky onion tarte Tatin and deeply flavoured chicken supreme at dinner. There's an attention to detail in the cooking here that's unusual for a hotel, even if the wait staff are a little inexperienced (or maybe that was just French laissez-faire). You can sit outdoors on sunny yellow chairs surrounded by plants; inside more comfortable leather banquettes and marble tables beckon. Room service is also available.
Out + about
Nearby is a plethora of cafes, patisseries and bars to explore, and a distinct lack of tourists. But the major sights are within reach if you're happy to get your steps up; otherwise you can grab an Uber or take the metro. Book a private cruise down the Seine with Green River Cruises or a wine-tasting at the Musee du Vin, set in 15th-century limestone cellars near the Eiffel Tower. After a nostalgic lunch of French classics at Restaurant Margaux, check out the Musee d'Orsay or nearby L'Orangerie, or test the exchange rate with some shopping at the flagship Galeries Lafayette (don't miss its rooftop cafe/bar for more fab panoramic views).
The verdict
Exactly the sort of place that makes you want to move to Paris and inhale its energy and joie de vivre. Beautifully considered design, and a laid-back vibe. Loved it.
Essentials
Highlight
The thought that's gone into every element, down to the Alain Ducasse dark chocolates in the room.
Lowlight
It's lovely having the huge picture window open to the street, but noisy on a Thursday night.
The writer was a guest of Virgin Australia, Atout France and Paris je t'aime tourism office.
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Knowles and Sowerwine's aim was to make something 'a little bit magical or wondrous' from this difficult material. If the work is an invitation to share in 'solastalgia' – distress caused by environmental change – this tension is tempered. Here, the warmth of handmade blends with the 'cool' of technology to make something vivid and moving. Knowles and Sowerwine met when they were studying Media Arts at RMIT in the early 2000s. They started with short films (stop-motion animation, often featuring dolls and toys) before moving to interactive installations. Sowerwine talks of being drawn to the blurring of the physical space and the screen space. 'We made interactive works in a number of different forms, and then saw a VR work in 2016 and were blown away by the possibilities of full immersion. We've always been techy, but we also like texture and real things and making the design process really tactile.' In their augmented reality experience Night Creatures (2022), life-sized animated sartorial bats swoop down in a cinema queue to tell stories about movies, subculture and community. Their highly awarded VR film Passenger (2019) puts the player in the back seat of a taxi to explore migration and place-making. Sowerwine tracks the beginnings of The World Came Flooding In to their pandemic project Can't Do Without You (2021), where they recreated their lockdown spaces in miniature. 'The experience was really moving for us. It started us thinking about stories where the transformation of space is really dramatic, and we'd just gone through a year of being followed around by floods. We wanted to make something about the climate, but we didn't want to be super-didactic. It was just what was in our world at the time.' The 2022 floods across eastern Australia made the climate emergency more visible than ever. 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It shows how we construct our lives and identities through place and objects. We think of home as somewhere fixed and stable. Safe as houses, the saying goes, but what does this mean when we are displaced? In the aftermath of disaster, where and how do we find ourselves? For the subjects in Knowles and Sowerwine's work, creative acts of remembrance are a step towards healing. Loading 'In Lismore, we had heard from people up the hill from where it happened,' Sowerwine says. 'They didn't really understand what the experience was like for people, how it is a traumatic thing to go through in your body.' As part of their testing and working through World, they showed the prototype to people who'd lived through their experience – 'on their request!' Knowles assures me. 'They were like 'wow, amazing. That's exactly what it was like'.' Sowerwine adds: 'We very much designed this to be an experience for everyone - even my 80-plus mother can do it. And in the writing, we're talking about floods, but there's a certain forward movement and positivity to it.' It is only when I'm driving home that I remember my own close call in country Victoria, the Sharpie line a friend drew on her wall labelled 'tidemark' after the creek had breached its banks and so rudely entered her house. Like drawing the kids' heights on a door frame, or, no, not like that, more a kind of proof, a distinction that there was a time before and a time after, that time keeps moving and it's better for us if we can bring ourselves to move with it.
