The lake house archetype serves as a framework for the many threads of the Bellevue narrative, a backdrop to display the stories, both personal and collective, some obvious, some inherent. The hotel guest’s journey is meant to be a slow reveal of discovery, like tales told around the campfire, or memories captured in old family photos, nostalgic, ironic and sometimes irreverent.
The curb appeal begins as the massing and materials differentiate the hotel with the ground floor set-back from Bellevue Street, leading to the porte cochere and setting the tone for the W’s unique identity. Hotel guests are introduced to the virtual lake house through an assent up a monumental stair as deconstructing dock, surrounded by a three-story hand painted street mural. Street art stories punctuate many spaces, revealing multiple aspects of the narrative as the story of Bellevue unfolds through the hotel’s imagery, both literal and metaphorical. The hotel’s Welcome lobby is housed in three mirrored chrome fragmented totems, representing the stories of the Pacific Northwest for the modern primitives in their towering dance on the adjacent wall. The hotel lobby and a restaurant are integrated into the second-floor retail space, creating a second hotel entrance.
The hotel abounds with public gathering spaces, all affectionately named and themed along lake house lines. The W Cocktail Culture Tribe finds a home in the reflective framework of the “Lakehouse Livingroom” to gather and indulge in creative libations around a roaring fireplace in which guests can recline in deep sofas and lounge chairs based on the 70s mismatched logic of the found object. The space is a high/low extravaganza of color and pattern, like the lake house repository of a family’s cast-off treasures or the garage band’s flop house, all with a technical, modern twist. The Livingroom connects to the “Pool House” so named for the game of billiards, not the water feature. The heart of the Pool House is the DJ Booth, where the music has blown the House apart and its fragments fly high.
A glass wall opens out to “The Porch” where a campfire beckons, surrounded by swings, rockers and cushions in an open-air lounge for relaxing, rain or shine, in the great outdoors where urban meets wilderness.
Guests will seek out “The Library” for a night cap and some pillow talk with a reading of a trashy romance novel or lurid detective story from the crammed shelves of summer-cast offs. While reclining on cushions resplendent with references to Jimi Hendrix’ bohemian finery and tribal plaid of the grunge rock movement, guests can strum away on a tattered instrument pulled from the shelves. A giant mural tells the story of the “Beautiful View” as a backdrop.
The W’s signature restaurant is The Lakehouse, a metaphorical whitewashed cabin in the woods. It serves as the gathering place for the modern primitive cocktail culture tribe to share a meal deeply rooted and referential to the area’s agrarian past. Diners enter the Butler’s Pantry and Kitchen Garden through heavy timbered trusses and walls charred and blackened by the years of wood smoke from the central hearth fire. Gingham and flowers in shades of gray decorate the walls like a memory of grandma’s breakfast room.
Guests retire to rooms through corridors of memories - family photos curated that surprise and delight, evocative reminders of our own summers past. The guestrooms are at once familiar and warm, welcoming with a fabulous window seat framing the “Beautiful View” on an imaginary porch complete with bar, Munchy Box and board games for a curated cocktail experience. Pulp poetry adorns the custom pillow, reminiscent and playful, and written in the style of a tawdry romance. The bed’s headboard is based on a silver blow-up float upon which to
sail away in your dreams.
The virtual lake house narrative is expressed inside and out, with the notion of Bellevue as seen from across Lake Washington as a convivial vacation destination. As the summer sun sets on the water’s expanse, the shimmering reflection on the hotel’s windows are reimagined in the aluminum orange fins, a colorful pixelated vision on the skyline. The influence of the region’s Japanese culture through the artistry of stacked paintings is found in the stepping of the tower’s architecture. The W Bellevue is the Totem for the Cocktail Culture Tribe housed in a Virtual Lake House filled with memories of life, both Modern and Primitive, in the Urban Wilderness of the Pacific northwest.