Owings & Merrill and then at DMJM Rottet before she went out completely on her own as Rottet Studio. (The Surrey is the first project completed by her Houston-based firm's New York satellite office.)
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Her work at the Surrey began outside, where she replaced the typical green canvas awnings with black ones, plus a canopy in black-painted metal-framed glass. That change required lobbying the local landmarks commission. "Everyone told me I wouldn't be able to convince them," Rottet says. "But I did." Right inside, her reinvention of the lobby involved reconfiguring it to make room for the Boulud-run Bar Pleiades.
christian louboutin shoes She also stripped out the cracked pinkish marble walls and the worn terrazzo flooring. The terrazzo has now been replaced by a marble-tile mosaic that mimics the pattern of an oriental rug as sketched by Rottet.
A fine-arts major before switching over to architecture, she relied heavily on her drawing background throughout the hotel-her whimsical handiwork is everywhere.
christian shoes A window-seat cushion in the presidential suite boasts some of her own handwritten poetry, while a chaise longue nearby features text on the origins of the Manhattan cocktail in addition to a recipe. For the front of the reception desk, she created star patterns that a leatherworker in Montana transformed into panels. "I told him not to go cowboy on me," she says with a laugh. The word infatuation is scrawled, graffitilike, across the silver-leafed front of a highboy in the lobby.
louboutin shoes In the adjacent Bar Pleiades, she had scribbled numerals painted on the back of the stools and a poem called "Central Park, 1974" woven into the carpet in block letters.
