Agnar Agnarsson’s new upper-range hotel, Home, obviously draws influence from Ian Schraeger’s living art approach to temporary housing, but what is even more impressive, he has outcharmed and out-comforted the best of the American hotel scene.
Everything about Home seems like a fortuitous accident, especially when presented by the imminently likeable, laid back creator. Yes, the rooms are full of upper-end gallery level works of art from Iceland and from a few of Agnar’s friends in New York. Yes, he has stunning ideas like balancing a form of rock carpet with the best sleeping mattress in the world, like presenting a flat screen plasma tv above a wall of pop-art wallpaper, but as he waves his hands and sips from a wheatgrass shake, it’s just natural.
Agnar has the easy-going confidence about his design that you only see from the most excessively qualified. He graduated from the respected Parson’s School of Design, won a design competition for W Hotels, and having served a tour of duty designing Weston Hotels, and he has also had respected tenures with the Harry Allen and Tsao McGown Architecture Studios.
Still, in coming back to Iceland he has to start up all over again. Joking about how quickly Iceland cycles through artists and how much it changed during his 9-year absence, he claims “Nine generations of people have gone through here since I’ve been gone. These days, I have to go to the back of the line to get in to the good clubs.”
For more information or to book go to www.this.is/home.