Upon visiting an abandoned 1920s warehouse in the River Arts District (RAD) in Asheville, NC, Michael Suomi, president, Suomi Design Works, found a building with an open roof and missing floors and windows. Graffiti was everywhere. But, as he put it, “It was a well-preserved relic and a wonderful canvas for us to design a hotel to fit into.”
What he and his team designed is now The Radical, a 70-key boutique hotel whose design was inspired by the building’s character and one of its former inhabitants.
“The original building has served as an inspiration in several ways,” said Suomi. “First, there was the masculine, heavy industrial character of the building—the poured-in-place concrete, brick and exposed-steel structure on some of the floors. That influenced the rest of our design palette. To balance the concrete, we brought in velvet. To balance the steel, we incorporated gold and metal. To balance the brick, we used luxurious wood finishes.”
Upon digging into the history of the warehouse, Suomi found its prior owner, Frederick Kent, had used it as his factory for producing his breakfast cereal, Wheat Hearts, and also as a produce depot for distributing fresh produce to grocery stores.
“We referenced that history and created a story around the former functions of the building, and around Frederick Kent and his descendants,” he said. “That became our conceptual foundation for all the design decisions that we made to build The Radical. That manifested into an interesting mix of inspirations and types of products, furnishings and accessories featured throughout the property.”
Suomi worked with several creatives on design elements within the hotel, including Kris Moran, a movie and TV set designer whose work can be seen in The Joker and The Wolf of Wall Street, among other films. She has since joined Suomi Design Works as director of storytelling.
“On this project, we created a Globe of Death, which is a spherical object made of steel created for certain types of circuses,” said Suomi. “Motorcyclists get inside and ride around the surface of the sphere.”
The globe is located in Afterglow, a coffee bar that becomes a nightclub in the evening. A DJ spins tunes inside the sphere suspended above the bar.
Graffiti can still be found throughout the property, though not how it appeared on Suomi’s first visit. He noted, “A street artist who’s become almost the grandfather of street art in Asheville was contacted by our clients, Hatteras Sky, to do some other work. He knew who had done the graffiti on the building, so he contacted all 18 artists, who came back and reworked their street art.”
Besides Afterglow, the hotel has three other food & beverage outlets, including Pretty Vacant Shelter Lounge, which can only be accessed from a staircase that comes down from the rooftop.
“We designed it to be a cool hidden bar that is also connected to its own special suite; if you rent this suite, you also get the bar attached to hold a private party there,” said Suomi. “This was a building where they packaged, stored and distributed Frederick Kent’s breakfast cereal, so we created this venue to have shelving that wraps all the way around the room. Instead of storing breakfast cereal, we decided this would be a grow room to store marijuana whenever it becomes legal in North Carolina.”
The color scheme throughout the property references both the 1920s, when Frederick Kent owned the building, as well as colors that were popular in the 1980s.
“To work through the color scheme for the bedrooms, we engaged Schumacher, a famous historic textile weaver, and we worked with them on recreating three of their vintage patterns from that time period to be the primary fabrics for the guestrooms,” Suomi explained. “We wanted the coloration to feel both historic and from the ’80s at same time, so we added some electric colors to pair with the historic colors. We used the fabric on multiple surfaces in the guestrooms, such as the lampshade, seating upholstery and curtains.”
At press time, the property was temporarily closed and housing first responders due to Hurricane Helene’s impact on Asheville.
