Airport hotels get a bad rap. But Australia’s inaugural Moxy is a cut above, thanks to Maed. Collective, a female-led Toronto firm whose name references the maker movement (and founder Corinne Huard’s daughter, Maggie Mae). The gig was full circle for studio lead Sally Pollock, who perfected the Moxy ’tude while at Yabu Pushelberg working on the brand’s New York hotels (Huard is also an alum). But this 32,000-square-foot, 301-key property in Sydney is a room all its own, so to speak. She and project colead Erika van der Pas married Moxy’s signature cheek with an industrial vibe befitting the air-side location, adding a soupçon of art deco sparked by the heritage storefronts of the surrounding neighborhood.
Wrapping around the steel-frame glass-box entry, the brick facade of the 13-story building, by Group GSA, was painted by local artist Elliott Routledge n the bold blue and orange colors of cargo containers. Farther in is the Little Baxter café, the bar, and the lounge, where sprawling seating meet an assemblage of custom rugs, each a different neo-deco pattern, pieced together on-site into a single carpet. Tucked at the rear, behind the lobby stairs, is the art house, a flex space and gallery where paintings hang from wall-mounted white-metal scaffolding in a sort of souped-up urban spin on the Victorian picture rail. If atmosphere is the charged space between things, here it’s the ping-pong betwixt vintage objects, regional art, and custom pieces that creates a reassuring homeyness. “Nothing feels unapproachable,” van der Pas says. Pollock agrees: “There’s a subtle intuitiveness to every space.” Resimercial, we’d say, in the current parlance.
