Part of the fun of being someone’s houseguest is having a chance to inspect all the intriguing photos, trinkets and other ephemera that tend to accumulate on a home’s ledges and bookshelves as years go by. Most hotels, by comparison, eschew this sort of charming personal clutter in favour of a more spartan, generic environment. One notable exception: Brach Madrid, where French architect and designer Philippe Starck has collected a lifetime’s worth of sentimental novelties and spread them throughout 57 guest rooms. In one such room, a portrait of a couple hangs above a shelf displaying an antique tambourine; to the right is a pair of weathered leather boxing gloves.

This cabinet-of-curiousities approach is Starck’s response to a specific design challenge. The Brach Madrid follows in the footsteps of the Brach Paris, another Starck project, which opened in 2018. When it came time to imagine the hotel chain’s second location, the designer was determined to make it feel like its own distinct property. With that in mind, he leaned wholeheartedly into individuality, creating two fictional characters — a couple — who went on to inform the building’s decor. By examining the many objects scattered throughout the Brach Madrid, guests can, in turn, trace the contours of a 1920s-era love story between a musician and a boxer.

Rather than creating the feeling of prying too closely into someone’s personal life, this retro timeframe evokes the sense of looking back on an epic romance for the ages — an experience heightened by framed maps and worn love letters featured in some of the rooms. To Starck, this is a way of capturing the “happy nostalgia” that characterizes Spanish poetry. 

Of course, each room still has a strong underlying architectural logic, with materials like marble, wood and leather arranged into clean-lined geometric compositions that act as a modern backdrop to the life-sized scrapbooks on display. On the other hand, the upholstery in each room skews joyfully maximalist: cushions in an assortment of bold patterns sit atop sofas clad in a juxtaposition of two different geometric fabrics, complemented by a green ruffled edge detail. Above the bar hangs an upholstered lampshade, again trimmed with a ruffled edge. 

Starck describes the project’s tension between orderly discipline and carefree spirit as a reflection of Spanish history — specifically, the country’s transition from the Francoist dictatorship to the La Movida countercultural movement of the 1970s. In this way, it captures the events that came after the defining romance between its two main characters — reinforcing the idea of a long-lost love affair that still holds its potency long after it concluded.

Things grow even more spirited in the lobby and restaurant, where burgundy terracotta tiles introduce a high-gloss sheen. In the private dining area, these tiles are playfully punctuated by a row of sculptural plates depicting various seafood dishes; above, a second row of still life paintings adds yet another layer of eye candy.

But perhaps the most memorable of all the hotel’s many visual accents is the glazed terracotta mirror that awaits in the guest bathrooms. Produced in moss green, it has a warped, slightly amateurish — and almost gaudy — innocence to its craftsmanship. It, too, ties back to Starck’s imagined narrative: It is something that he imagined being produced by his male character as a romantic gesture for his partner. When swept up into love, even the rough dukes of a boxer can be transformed into the soulful hands of an artist.