Set along Aspen, Colorado’s central Paepcke Park, Mollie is a new 68-room hotel with stylistic nods to the Bauhaus, the German architecture and design school that helped spawn modernism. One of its most prominent students, Austrian American architect Herbert Bayer, was instrumental in shaping the look and feel of the popular ski resort town.
Mollie hotel is perched on Aspen’s Paepcke Park
Polymath Bayer – perhaps most famous for developing the eponymous geometric san serif typeface – was behind the design of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, the renovation of Aspen’s Wheeler Opera House, and numerous local arts and culture buildings. His implementation of rational functionalism is evident throughout the city.
With a façade evoking Silver Boom-era lot lines but also the simplicity of rectilinear massing so critical to the Bauhaus principle, Mollie stands out amongst nearby Victorian homes, yet its proportioning is conducive to its context. Large exposures help frame the surrounding natural beauty, while reflecting the scale of these historical, 19th-century structures’ fenestration. Award-winning local firm CCY Architects was responsible for this thoughtful, site-responsive approach.
Much of the chosen building material reflects this explicit yet nuanced treatment. A dark red and purple structural base suggests the natural oxidation of stone in the nearby Elk Mountains, but also the components prevalent throughout Aspen’s downtown. The exterior is clad in fast-growing, sustainably harvested radiata pine and applied in a slightly non-uniform fashion to emulate the area’s dense forests.
‘Mollie Aspen is an homage to the city’s reputation as a place of art, culture, and adventure,’ says Ruben Caldwell, partner at Post Company, the firm charged with the hotel’s interior design. ‘We took inspiration from the town’s storied mining history, natural landscape, and Bauhaus presence, which reflects its tradition of being firmly grounded while gazing abroad.’
Through the various public spaces – an open-plan lobby and living room-esque bar – and guest rooms, the reduction of superfluous excess, as espoused by the Bauhaus, is harnessed in the idiosyncratic shapes common in the American West. The latest energy efficiency technologies – such as solar-powered heat pumps – pull this holistic concept together.
Clean lines play off of natural materials, earthenware ceramics, sand-cast solid brass, and pared-back yet hand-woven textiles indicative of Anni Albers, another of the Bauhaus’ influential graduates. Earthtones and soft yet restrained shapes abound throughout. The hotel is a testament to the fact that the ability to achieve formal rigour doesn’t have to come at the cost of the finest artisanal prowess. Industry and craft aren’t always mutually exclusive.
