A nineteenth-century neo-Romanesque chapel in the Saint-Félix quarter of Nantes, its sandstone walls and polychrome stained glass intact, was converted into one of France's more genuinely surprising boutique hotels when Sozo Hotel opened within its nave and ancillary buildings in 2012. The intervention kept the ecclesiastical shell entirely legible from the street — arched windows, dressed stone quoins, the full height of the apse rising above the treeline — while inserting a contemporary programme that makes no attempt at visual deference to what surrounds it. The lobby, housed in the former nave, is where the collision lands with the most force: exposed ashlar columns and stained glass overhead, against a low-slung white Corian reception desk, Artifort Pebble chairs in magenta and teal, and a black grand piano parked beside the bar. The palette inside the 24 rooms swings between chromatic restraint and deliberate provocation — standard rooms finished in white with acid-green accent walls, dark-stained timber floors, and Eames DSR chairs at the breakfast tables, while the suites carry freestanding stone-resin bathtubs separated from the sleeping area by glass screens rather than walls. Pop photography and graphic art hang throughout, chosen to push against the solemnity of the masonry rather than harmonise with it. The cumulative effect is less sacrilegious than it sounds — the building is confident enough to absorb the colour.

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