Recently I was contacted by Best Western International and asked to provide
Interior Design Evaluations of Premier hotels in Central and South America. I
just returned from my first property visit which was to Monterrey, Mexico.
It has been almost 20 years since I have been to Mexico. I am hispanic and
bi-lingual, so this is a great opportunity to see other locales and practice my
spanish. While at the hotel, which is located near the airport in Monterrey, I
provided the hotel owners with solutions in order to comply with the Premier Guidelines and also provided sketches to assist in their modifications to the
property. Shown below are a few examples.
Monterrey, the city was quite lovely. Absolutely beautiful mountains with funky divets
and contours surround the city. This is a very industrial city with lots of
machiadores and A steel foundry. Heineken recently purchased the big local
brewery.
The dichotomy between old and new is fascinating. I was
on an expressway going to the downtown area. The expressway and all the roads which are at a low elevation were totally under
construction because they had a massive flood which tore thru the center of town.
I saw an old Mexican style horse and buggy like straight out of an old movie
walking on the side road. And there are
shacks lined up the edge of the expressway, which is actually a toll road, and
beautiful hi-rises which are hotels. hospitals, offices with a very large cosmopolitan shopping center. There are Starbucks, Best buy, Grainger and a
host of other american businesses. The architecture that is for the mexican
companies is fascinating, in some ways I think they are just not as restricted
as we are, due to codes, and pre-conceptions, some interesting materials,,
colors and more sculptural elements.
