IRISH SOCCER FANS lucky enough to be travelling to Poznan for Euro 2012 will by now have already found themselves on the website of Blow Up Hall 5050, possibly wondering if it’s a joke. But no, it’s a hotel.
Named after Antonioni’s cult film from the 1960s, it has been described as “half interactive art project, half design-boutique hotel”. The five-star hotel’s own website bills it as nothing less than an interactive work of art, one in which the guest becomes part of the creative process. You have been warned.
Among the idiosyncrasies is that the bedrooms have no room numbers. Instead, guests checking in are presented with an iPhone which they must use to find the right room, the idea being that the room chooses you. All very cool but no surer recipe for mayhem after a night’s revelry could possibly exist.
Can you imagine all the tired and emotional green jersey- wearers, in oversized leprechaun hats, trying to find their rooms at 4am, before giving up and settling down to sleep on the landing.
Worse still, public spaces in the hotel are monitored on camera, with images of guests captured and projected onto giant video installations downstairs, in real time. So not alone will all those bewildered souls be wandering the corridors like a scene from an Irish Underworld, but there’s a very good chance they’ll be broadcast in all their pixelated confusion too.
On the plus side, the hotel only has 22 rooms, so it’s not like there’ll be crowd control issues. On the other hand, the delays at checkout will be only massive as 22 hungover soccer supporters search frantically for 22 lost iPhones.