Vitality Hotel

The discipline is a single rule. Guest rooms are identical in all six: an olive green panelled headboard wall washed from a cove, floating oak nightstands, opal glass sconces in brass, oat linen, polished concrete, a jute rug. The lobbies are not. Each takes the architecture it was given and receives the same short kit: woven rattan pendants, caned lounge chairs, solid timber tables, a curved plaster banquette lit from underneath, and planting dense enough to be structural rather than decorative. The room is the brand. The lobby is the city.

Nothing in that kit came off a shelf. The lobby, outdoor and market furniture was drawn by the studio, made to specification in Indonesia and imported into the United States by it. No two ground floors carry the same food and beverage program either: Orlando has a bar and an outdoor pool, Marietta a restaurant and a lobby bar, Reading an outdoor bar, and Dayton a restaurant on its top floor, Kodo, named after a Japanese restaurant in a Los Angeles fire station.

Timber and sheet metal carry the palette, and the olive green of the leaf mark runs from the furniture into the planting. Signage follows one hand from site to site: bronze letters, a backlit leaf, a single word and an arrow. Six buildings, one brand, and nothing in common except what was designed.