ARTICLE: Robb Report | A Room With a Viewpoint

Robb Report • Shana Ting Lipton

The Beaumont hotel in London's Mayfair offers perhaps the ultimate way to experience top-caliber art: guests can sleep within a massive stainless-steel sculpture by the Turner Prize–winning British artist Sir Antony Gormley. The exterior of the 43-square-foot Room suite is based on a mold of Gormley’s body and stands out from the hotel’s Art Deco facade like an enormous cubist robot. Guests ascend a narrow staircase, passing through the bathroom at the top of the steps, to enter a spartan, softly lit space lined in fumed oak. The suite (about $4,100 nightly) boasts high ceilings but scarcely enough floor space for more than a bed. Nevertheless, Gormley describes Room as “real luxury — a place of peace, tranquillity, and respite, a shelter from the storm” — or at least, from busy Bond Street. The artist chipped away at his inhabitable work— ”sculpting darkness,” as he says — placing Room’s single window above eye level and insulating it from sound and heat. “It’s very grand because it’s 30 feet high, but it’s also very intimate,” Gormley says. “I hope it fits people’s sleep like a well-tailored glove fits a hand.”

Highlight: To fully experience Room, Gormley directs guests to disrobe before entering the space: “My ambition for the work is that it should take the place of clothing and you should enter it naked.” www.thebeaumont.com, +44.20.7499.1001