Ippolito Fleitz Group–Identity Architects Creates a Vibrant Coffee Bar for Gen Zers in Munich

Young and dynamic. Straightforward yet detailed. That was the atmospheric goal—and result—for Ippolito Fleitz Group–Identity Architects at New Era, a coffee bar in Munich. Situated in the city’s Schwabing district, a vibrant student-populated neighborhood, Interior Design Hall of Fame members Gunter Fleitz and Peter Ippolito and their team strove to attract the Gen Z set starting from the street. Through the storefront’s glazing, passersby can catch glimpses of the rhythmic ceiling, a geometric landscape of gray, yellow, and teal cubes, actually printed and folded Forex boxes—a solution that’s at once chic, lightweight, and budget friendly. The energy continues to the wall-color palette, a spirited mix of lavender, peach, and royal blue, the latter reappearing on the café’s upholstered lounge chairs, placed in arrangements that suggest rooms within a room. Verdant live plants and barista workshops round out the 900-square-foot café, its offerings in step with its name.

These Chic Hotels Reflect the History of Their Surroundings 

From Munich to Mexico, new hotels look to their neighborhood’s history for creative guidance.

Tá Hotel de Diseño, Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico, by Anonimous and JAHS

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Housed in an early 20th-century neocolonial mansion, the two-story, 11-key boutique property is laid out around a pair of courtyards—one with a pool, bar, and restaurant, the other flanked with guest quarters—while rooms on the upper level are surrounded by a new ipe deck and bronze-finished steel lattices that nod to the city’s colonial-era ironwork.

Schwan Locke, Munich, by Fettle

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Starting with an almost completed apartment building, the 151-room hotel freely reinterprets the city’s early 20th–century Deutscher Werkbund movement, paying homage to its ethos of combining mass production with traditional craft through the joinery details of the café counter and lounge bar as well as the many pieces of custom furniture, light fixtures, and art.

Hotel Louvre Montana, Paris, by Maidenberg Architecture

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While the gut renovation of the mid 19th–century hotel left little but the staircase and elevator intact, the 25-room, seven-story property retains its Haussmannian charm thanks to a crisply revamped facade and residentially inflected interiors that embrace the period’s design codes but in diverted, modernized form, the custom star-embroidered fabric on the breakfast room wall being a twinkling case in point.

Hotel Paradis Pietrasanta, Italy, by Point3architecture

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Working exclusively with natural materials—marble, terra cotta, ceramic, and wrought iron among them—the three-level, 12-key Tuscan property, formerly an 18th-century palazzo, feels as if it’s always been there yet with enlivened interiors featuring furniture channeling 1970s Italy and a series of wall tapestries by Moroccan artist Khalil Minka.