Joris Bruneel, I’m a hotelier and president of The MyHotels Group which I founded in 2013. We run 18 establishments including two independent hotels. We established Babel in Belleville in 2021 and in May 2022 we opened the Rosalie hotel in Paris’s 13th arrondissement. I was introduced to Marion after I heard about her Tuba project in Marseille. We immediately hit it off. Our shared southern roots helped – I’m from the Var and she’s from Marseille! I particularly like her open-mindedness and creative flexibility. She never turns up with a fully-prepared kit and doesn’t like doing things the standard way… She does them her way and brilliantly too! With the Rosalie, she breathed new life into the classic 4-star hotel style and listened carefully to the story I wanted to tell her.

I’m Marion Mailaender, an interior architect and designer. I took on the Rosalie hotel’s interior design at Joris’s request. We met just after the Tuba Club opened, a project that cemented my expertise in the hotel world (there are only five bedrooms (laughs)). Joris took a chance when he chose me for this much bigger hotel and our conversations were fascinating – I learned so much during this project.

The Rosalie, on Avenue de la soeur Rosalie between La place d’Italie and Les Gobelins, is a 4-star hotel with 60 rooms. Believe it or not, it’s really calm as it’s set back from hustle and bustle of Place d’Italie… We’re lucky to have over 400 m2 of outdoor space, comprising three terraces that formed the backbone of our project and which we revamped with the help of Merci Raymond, a landscaping company that creates a lot of Paris’s green rooftops. The idea was to introduce nature to the heart of Paris, to reconcile urban living and nature and to give the Rosalie an “urbex” feel. There’s an old Peugeot 205 on the roof, filled with plants that are growing out of its windows and even the bonnet! You’ll find hops, raspberries, hazelnuts, grapes, herbs… Marion threw herself into this lush universe so that it would correspond to her decorative ideas.

I’ve lived in Paris for nigh-on twenty years, and I was beginning to find the city a bit hostile, aggressive, unnatural… I wanted to create urban hotels that meant something and weren’t just money-spinners. It’s why Babel and Rosalie are designed to create a link with living things, to bring humans and nature closer together. It’s why they are very much locally-rooted, and promote sustainable tourism and food systems. It’s why the Rosalie, like Babel, was awarded the Clef Verte label.

I fully took on board (and share) Joris’s values when designing the hotel’s interior. People are at the heart of things. I invited students from Ecole Estienne (the famous applied arts school next door) to take part in the project. The typography students produced the rooms’ signs while the digital arts students created a fresco. The artist Pauline Rousseau produced a photographic work based on the Gobelins tapestries. The idea was to immerse the hotel in the neighbourhood’s culture.

My main inspiration came from the initial brief – to bring nature into this urban setting for a city hideaway that’s as fresh as the great outdoors. I thought about using cork on the floor for a natural feel that corresponds with the plants that line the facade. And using galvanised steel for the interior furniture for a bolder way to evoke nature than simply placing a plant on a desk. I also blended meticulously designed furniture by Bouroullec for Hay with trellised benches from low-cost garden furniture suppliers.

Because when lockdown ended, we all wanted to enjoy some nature in Paris, and the Rosalie’s main attraction is the outdoor areas. Concrete needed to give way to nature. The landscapers from Merci Raymond managed to incorporate nature so that gradually the entire hotel will feature botanical elements and where the indoor areas are more like covered passages that link one outdoor area to another.

I’ve got a crazy idea for a place centred around psychedelics (just decor-wise obviously) and also a more sensible project set in the mountains which will also focus on living things. Or maybe something more spiritual – I’m getting more mystical with age.

In my much-loved Cévennes to begin with, then maybe in Marseille to open a new Babel establishment!

In Pigalle where I’ll be finishing an oyster bar project, in a gym with my boyfriend Rodolphe Parente, on Tuba’s new terrace in Marseille, lazing by a pool in Giens or in a dye workshop in Tangiers!