What the Campana Brothers brought to Athens when YES! Hotels commissioned them to redesign the Olympic Palace building near Syntagma Square was something the city's hotel scene had rarely encountered: a sensibility rooted in Brazilian craft culture — shadow puppets, folk silhouettes, found-object assemblage — grafted onto a seven-floor 1960s concrete frame. The NEW Hotel opened in 2011 with 79 rooms across the refurbished structure, its facade lit at night with oversized stacked lettering that signals intention from across the square. Fernando and Humberto Campana treated the interiors as an ongoing argument between their São Paulo instincts and Greek material culture, most visibly in the guest rooms, where gold-leaf shadow puppet figures parade across coral-pink accent walls beside Thonet bentwood chairs painted lacquer red, and light oak floors ground headboards upholstered in pale grey velvet. The more arresting rooms position a faceted gold-mirrored vanity unit — sculptural enough to function as freestanding art — against floor-to-ceiling glazing that frames the Acropolis directly. On the rooftop, the Tudor Hall restaurant carries a different register entirely: dark walnut floors, deeply cushioned olive-velvet armchairs arranged around white-clothed tables, and pendant lamps in crumpled brass and leather that suggest something between a private Athenian library and a stage set. The fibre-optic star ceiling shifts the atmosphere toward the theatrical after dark, the Athens skyline pressing in through the full-length glazing on every side.

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