Hamburg's HafenCity district has spent two decades rebuilding its industrial waterfront identity, and few conversions capture that project as honestly as the 25hours Hotel Altes Hafenamt, which was fitted into a late nineteenth-century red-brick harbour authority building — the Altes Hafenamt itself — whose arched windows and Hanseatic masonry have been left almost entirely untouched. The conversion, carried out with interiors by Werner Aisslinger's Berlin studio, opened in 2017 with 170 rooms across five floors, the building's civic bones providing an immediate counterweight to whatever hospitality softness might otherwise have crept in. Aisslinger's approach throughout is one of productive friction — heritage structure played against deliberately provisional-feeling furnishings. Rooms are painted in dusty rose with exposed copper pipework tracing the walls, headboards fashioned from salvaged panelled doors still showing their numbering, side tables assembled from boat anchor chain, and teal-blue carpet laid beneath bamboo folding chairs that carry a faint echo of mid-century campaign furniture. The lobby lounge leans further into the building's past, with original brickwork left bare under exposed steel beams and ductwork, layered over with kilim rugs and chesterfield sofas in a combination that feels closer to a harbourmaster's private library than a hotel bar. The restaurant continues the material conversation: an onyx-topped counter runs the length of the room, bentwood café chairs pulled up alongside tartan banquette seating, pendant lights fabricated from what appear to be salvaged metal petals hanging above the pass.

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