From Sobriety Surprise

The inventive spirit of Dutch design is on full display at Amsterdam’s Conservatorium Hotel.

- Adeline Loh

The Dutch, it’s said, aren’t afraid to be normal, because for them, “normal” is “strange enough”. I experience this worldview first-hand when my assigned host, Wes Viana Ferreiro at Amsterdam’s Conservatorium Hotel, offers me a chocolate bar from Dutch brand Tony’s. He tells me that, unlike most chocolate bars with even sections, this one is designed with uneven bits, because that’s how the world actually is – which is to say, irregular and unexpected.

That chocolate bar is a micro representation of the hotel itself. To be sure, the historic facade that passers-by see from the street, in the heart of the city’s Museumplein district, hides cutting-edge design that combines vegetation with steel; bricks with glass; and arches and mosaics with industrial beams. The stunning blend of these disparate elements has helped establish the five-year-old Conservatorium as a leading luxury hotel in the Netherlands – the choice of A-listers like Madonna, Rihanna and Justin Bieber.