Starck-designed Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes is now officially open !

Real estate group Pichet, lifestyle hospitality group Ennismore and Philippe Starck have collaborated on Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes, a new hotel in the city’s historic Chartrons district. Bordeaux residents are familiar with the sumptuous stone façade stretching across 81 Cours du Médoc.

Built in 1871, in a Neo-Gothic style, the structure nowadays comprises thirteen crenellated bays framing the main entrance and a gable bearing the United Kingdom’s coat of arms set above the arched doorway – a nod to the city’s historic commercial links with the British Isles.

For two centuries, the building was at the beating heart of the wine trade in the area.  The Garonne River flows nearby, facilitating global trade and exports of fine wines, cognac and brandy stored in the 22 vaulted cellars lit by gauze spouts. In 1966, however, a fire destroyed the cellars housing a century’s worth of grands crus classés.

In 2018, the Pichet family entrusted the property to Starck, who, accompanied by Jean-François Le Gal of architecture firm Advento), renovated the historic facade and started work on a refining and extend the site. It now houses an elegant Japanese-inspired restaurant, creating a true link between past and future, East and West.

“Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes is a château built with high-quality stones and brickworks of elegance, where you live more because you are loved cared for,” says Starck. “Here is real life, the fertile one that always evolves and thrives on encounters – and often the most unlikely become the most likely. It is no longer a possibility but a certainty that Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes is our necessity.”

Patrice Pichet, Chairman and CEO of the eponymous group, comments: “Following in the footsteps of the Château les Carmes Haut-Brion winehouse, the choice of Starck for the architectural design and artistic direction was an obvious one for us. Through this project, history and modernity come together to arouse emotion and offer an experience marked by strong, immersive novelties.”

From the entrance with its pointed-arch glass door, opens up a diorama of Bordeaux and Japanese atmospheres. The soft, earthy colours naturally derived from the local stone and brick, the modernity of the rough concrete reminiscent of the original building’s warehouses, the deep carpets and rugs with their organic patterns, the sophistication of the Japanese art of living, the warm light diffused by the lampshades and lanterns that line the entire space as a unifying element.

The 97 guestrooms and suites have been designed by Starck as cocoons, intimate spaces bathed in soft, harmonious light. Here too, priority is given to noble, natural materials – leather seats, wooden doors, boiled wool curtains – and to earthy colours, as well as to clean, essential lines, particularly in the bathrooms.

Everywhere, the mind is drawn to trompe-l’oeils and mental games such as the hollow-moulded concrete walls, whose poetic message is reflected in the adjoining mirrors. Several rooms and suites open onto private terraces planted with lush greenery, and two of the hotel’s suites can be connected for special events, giving access to a terrace on the building’s roof-façade.

Meanwhile, the hotel’s Chef, Masaharu Morimoto, was born in Hiroshima, Japan and draws inspiration from Japanese tradition as well as innovative culinary techniques. The result is surprising and refined cuisine based on the subtlety of Japanese products and the excellence of French gastronomy. The menu features maki, sushi, sashimi and Morimoto’s signature dishes

To discover the Japanese chef’s cuisine, Morimoto Bordeaux offers several dining options. The 180-seat restaurant extends like a majestic theatre, punctuated by red Bordeaux brick columns and elegant glassed-in wine cellars. Starck imagined it as a “place made above all for the people who will live there, a place of encounters that transports us to an elsewhere, an invented elsewhere”.

In a nod to the confidentiality required for the business that has made Bordeaux a crossroads for the international wine trade, Starck has imagined a space at the edge of the restaurant, housing a table for eight that can be privatised by means of Japanese panels. Once a month, the salon will become a discreet gastronomic table where guests can enjoy a food, wine and sake pairings specially created by Morimoto and his team.

As in Japan, where bistros – Izakayas – and wine bars are an integral part of the culture, the bar offers creative cocktails, spirits and fine wines, as well as sake and Japanese beers. The cellar is a tribute to the origins of the building, housing over 10,000 bottles, including prestigious Bordeaux wines alongside a curated international selection.

Conceived as a natural continuation of the restaurant, the 200m2 tree-lined terrace – open and protected from the hustle and bustle of the city – can seat 70 diners. These spaces come alive at nightfall to become the festive, privileged rendezvous for late afternoons and weekends; a DJ will be on hand from Thursday to Saturday evenings from 9pm.

With a swimming pool, spa, hammam, sauna and fitness room, Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes’ wellness area is a welcoming place bathed in light and dedicated to holistic wellbeing. The swimming pool, with its large windows opening onto the terrace, unfurls its 45m2 pool under a warm wooden ceiling. The space includes a steam room and an infra-red sauna.

The spa’s four spacious cabins – one of which is double – offer a wide range of treatments designed to enhance the wellbeing of body and mind, such as a number of targeted beauty rituals – ancestral, serenity or slimming – foot reflexology, shiatsu, sophrology and guided meditation sessions. Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes has partnered with French cosmetics brand Codage

General Manager Bruno G Tailly concludes: “At Mondrian Bordeaux Les Carmes, our guests are taken on a real voyage thanks to the culinary talents of our chefs, the different combinations of flavours and the techniques they use. But also thanks to the unique atmosphere of the place imagined by Philippe Starck.”

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