Design or Lifestyle? A Review of London's Boutique Hotel Scene

The eighties brought the world many design disasters, so it's perhaps ironic that one of the most enduring hotel design trends was born in 1981, in London and San Francisco simultaneously. Attempting to create the antidote to the standardized 'big hotels', typified by the Hilton and Marriott empires, Anoushka Hempel's 51-room Blakes Hotel in London and Bill Kimpton's Bedford Hotel in San Francisco broke the mould of hotels.