Philippe Starck's revolving door at St Martins Lane glows acid-green after dark, a chromatic provocation visible from the pavement that signals exactly what kind of hotel lies within — one where the entrance is a statement, the lobby a theatre set, and the guest room a controlled experiment in white. Opened in 1999 as part of Ian Schrager's first London foray, the Covent Garden property was fitted into a purpose-built postmodern tower by architect Sir William Whitfield, its 204 rooms arranged across floors that look out over the rooftops of WC2, including, from the right angle, the dome of the Coliseum next door. Starck's interior logic runs on deliberate contradiction. The guest rooms are exercises in near-total whiteness — low platform beds in white lacquer, leopard-print carpet, caramel silk curtains, and furniture that shifts between clinical and playful, including the quilted oversized lounge chair visible in the images. Against this bleached restraint, the bar and restaurant lean hard in the opposite direction: tufted leather in ox-blood and tobacco, dark walnut panelling, mismatched Victorian dining chairs in bottle green, Chesterfield armchairs on patchwork kilim rugs, and amber-lit ceilings lined with antiqued mirror. The tension between those two registers — the polar white of the rooms and the amber warmth of the drinking and dining spaces — is what gives St Martins Lane its lasting design charge.

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