A Semi Permanent Hotel with Highsnobiety

After a year defined by stasis and the social distance between us, Semi Permanent and Highsnobiety combined their shared vision and commitment to champion progress, innovation, and purpose beyond product, to create a first-of-its-kind omni-channel consumer platform, engaging audiences through physical and digital means.

Unifying Highsnobiety’s highly engaged digital audience, and Semi Permanent’s 19+ years experience in immersive event and curation design, we arrived at a A Semi Permanent Hotel presented by Highsnobiety - a safe haven of innovation and connectedness through design.

Designed to immerse, and engage creative audiences in future thinking, contemporary culture and thought provoking ideas, the physical experience reimagined 15+ hotel rooms, the bar, rooftop, cinema, atrium and lobby as places to explore new ideas, products and stories.

This event format allowed us to manage audiences in a controlled environment including guest capacity flow, small group experiences and safe social distancing with Australia’s success in managing covid reinforcing confidence in the physical event.

The digital microsite brought the tactile experience to a global audience and those unable to attend in-person, through a fully-bespoke microsite on highsnobiety.com, replicating the physical hotel blueprint online featuring exclusive content including artist interviews and image galleries from the hotel talent and creatives.

Combining elements from both the Semi Permanent and Highsnobiety brands, we designed and created a bespoke brand identity for the experience, with creative direction across event collateral, uniforms, way-finding, guest experience, social and digital assets, and more.

Together with our collaborators, Polestar, RIMOWA and Glenfiddich; leaders in mobility, technology and beverage, we launched products and global innovations to a discerning audience of Cultural Pioneers who don’t just buy in to product, but invest in philosophies, and proliferate engaging ideas down to their peers and followers.

To launch leading electric vehicle brand Polestar into the APAC market, we communicated the brands sustainability and design credentials across a suite of multi-sensory experiences and installations, including rooftop talks comprising of a sustainability Q&A with Sea Forest founder Sam Elsom, and a deep-dive in to the world of NFTs with Foundation Labs Founder, Matt Vernon and artist David Porte Beckfeld. Within the hotel, we leveraged a global collaboration with musician, futurist and robotics engineer Moritz Simon Geist to transform a guest room in to an immersive light and sound experience powered by Polestar vehicle parts, alongside a design-led AR exhibition exploring Polestar’s sustainability credentials in the hotel lobby, bringing the brands Lifecycle Assessment Report (LCA) to life.

We worked with Glenfiddich - the world’s most awarded single malt Scotch whisky, to launch Grand Cru, their most premium pour yet, with help from creative Australian mavericks Vicki Lee and Benjamin Avery of The Colourblind Florist. In looking to celebrate the non-conformists and creative experimenters of our times, the Mavericks in Residence activation saw both artists create new, site-specific work with a takeover of the Golden Age Bar via a series of performances that offered a glimpse into their artistic process, alongside hourly tastings of Grand Cru. At night, the Mavericks in Residence bar became the go-to destination for party guests, sipping on bespoke Glenfiddich cocktails within the intimate booths of the Golden Age Bar, with over 644 drinks served across the two days.

Following the success of its coveted Off-White collaboration, luxury travel and lifestyle brand RIMOWA chose the hotel for the global reveal of its ESSENTIAL Neon translucent luggage collection, with hotel guests the first in the world to preview the range two months prior to launching exclusively online. Completely void of natural light, we transformed the hotel room into an immersive light experience representing the Pink and Lime colourways of the luggage collection. The brands complimentary Never Still and Personal bag collections played host to engaging conversation around the future of mobility and travel, with roving actors and talent tasked with the embodiment of a RIMOWA traveller, embarking on their next voyage. To coincide, Semi Permanent designed a bespoke three part sticker collection for RIMOWA, exclusive to the hotel experience.

The experience featured curated installations and screenings by Gia Coppola, Flume and Jonathan Zawada’s ‘Tiddalik’, Haydenshapes, Daniel Arsham and Chris Stamp’s ‘Wave Relic’, Joji’s ‘The Extravaganza’, P.A.M’s ‘Postive Messages’ and more, and Future Classic DJs providing entertainment on the launch party night.

A Future Talks Program, hosted by acclaimed journalist and researcher Noelle Faulkner, brought together some of Australia’s brightest creative minds including musician Genesis Owusu, contemporary artists Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Jonny Niesche and Louise Zhang; acclaimed photographer Pierre Toussaint, Wiradjuri poet and artist Jazz Money, and more.