Design Notes: Classic Elegance with a Contemporary Twist at Four Seasons Hotel Baku, Azerbaijan

Four Seasons Hotel Baku, Azerbaijan boasts an interior designed to the highest quality by London-based company Richmond. The company has created a setting that merges the French Beaux-Arts style with contemporary twists resulting in a environment finished to the highest quality.

The grand public areas are perfectly proportioned, being spacious without becoming intimidating. Here the designers’ choice of a neutral colour palette combined with accents of fresh greens, charcoal and ebony makes for a calming and sophisticated ambiance. Undulating curves on the furnishings combined with spectacular sculptural bespoke lighting add a touch of drama to the rooms, perfectly suited to this vibrant city.

Zafferano Restaurant is the Hotel’s signature all-day restaurant, named after the Italian word for “saffron,” the spice that grows abundantly in Azerbaijan. Here Richmond continues the drama of the high vaulted ceiling through lavish Italian mosaic flooring decorated with flowers, which is echoed by the hand painted panels on the windows. Ornate Murano glass chandeliers hang from gold domed alcoves.

Bentley’s whiskey bar is very much designed in a refined private club style. Richmond selected sumptuous dark furnishings, geometric patterns, a dramatic mirrored bar and stunning bespoke lighting to create a relaxing, intimate feel to the room. 

The large Jaleh Spa with a striking indoor pool within a glass-roofed atrium is designed in a more contemporary classical style with relaxing neutral colours and clean simple lines. The facilities including male and female hammams, speciality treatment rooms and large beauty areas. Throughout, as in the rest of the Hotel, the choice of lighting design is key to the overall design. 

The spacious guest rooms follow the classical French theme but are kept current through the addition of contemporary furniture and fabrics. Again Richmond used a light colour scheme using subtle textures and patterns to add a sense of refined luxury. Of the 171 guest rooms, including 29 luxury suites and two Presidential Suites, almost all open to a balcony with views of the Caspian Sea or the Old City, and are filled with natural light.

Four Seasons Hotel Baku perfectly illustrates the commitment Richmond gives to the sourcing and detailing of interior design projects such as this. By seamlessly blending the classical with the contemporary, the designers have created a hotel interior that instantly welcomes and relaxes its visitors while crafting the sensation that they are within the highest quality environment.

Art at Four Seasons Hotel Baku

One of the most distinctive features of Four Seasons Hotel Baku is the fact that its every floor is literally covered with amazingly beautiful art pieces by different artists.

Piazza Lounge

A series of drawings by Julian Bray was commissioned from the artist for this project and is exclusive to Four Seasons Hotel Baku. The original drawings by have been inspired from the samovars in the private collection of Mikhail Borschev, which includes examples of many of the famous samovar makers of the second half of the 19th century.

Near Piazza Lounge

A beautiful vessel was created in the studios of Peter Millard and Partners Ltd. The vessel has been finely fretted and worked from mild steel and finished in metal oxide, silver and gold leaf. It represents one of the four elements, fire, and was inspired by the Burning Mountain in Azerbaijan.

Lift Lobby Area

The inspiration for these original contemporary boiserie designs by Luca Crestani are from a series of three dimensional boiserie panels created for the circular salon of the Hotel de Montmorency, Paris in the 18th century. The originals are now in the Boston Museum of Art, USA.

Reception Area

A collection of leaves has been hand crafted in the studios of Peter Millard and Partners Ltd from thin sheets of copper that have then been either oxidised, bronzed or gold leafed. Each design has been taken from the various trees around the world such as the sycamore and genko and represent the four seasons. The final leaves are so fine that they only weigh a few grams each.

Grand Staircase

Sculptor Simon Bingle has created an abstract work is entitled Flight that inspires movement through the space in which it is located. The sculpture has been formed in mild steel and resin bronze.

Bentley's

Several decorative pieces have been made in the studios of Peter Millard and Partners Ltd. from burr veneer and hand worked metal leaves that have been coppered and then gold leafed. The veneer represents the cigar box and the leaves are actually small tobacco leaves before they grow into the larger leaves that we are more accustomed to.

Jaleh Spa

Three paper works by Anthony Haythornthwaite represent health and life in the form of swallows, butterflies and dragonflies.