L/B on Their One-Room Hotel

PARIS—The fact that Hotel Everland, currently docked on the roof of Palais de Tokyo, is a one-room hotel as well as an artwork is only the most obvious of its self-contained contrasts. By day, it is an object of the art world, with a picturesque view of the Eiffel Tower, that visitors to the Parisian museum are welcome to explore; by night, the museum empties and the pod becomes an object of the real world, accommodating guests for one-night-max stays. Still, Everland appears less like an earthly object than like something dropped by a U.F.O. Constructed of polyurethane-painted epoxy and fiberglass and decorated with a synthetic leather couch and blue-green velour carpeting, the 10-ton hotel, which measures 36 by 11 by 11 feet, was originally created for Expo.02. The Swiss national exhibition’s curator, Gianni Jetzer, wrote that the work “seemed to welcome everyone, but it was an exclusive place in the most precise sense of the word.” Operating democratically, the hotel makes stays in the future available for booking every two weeks, but rates are pricey (they start at $652). And what can be more exclusive than sleeping amidst the scintillating lights of the Eiffel Tower, fulfilling the childhood dream of being locked in a museum overnight?

Hotel Everland is the latest of many retro-futurist site-specific installations Swiss-based artists Sabina Lang, 36, and her husband, Daniel Baumann, 41, who sign their works L/B, have created, with previous projects developed for such institutions as the Swiss Institute in New York and KBB gallery in Barcelona. After Expo.02, where Everland rested along the lake in Yverdon, Switzerland, the hotel roof-hopped to the couple’s studio in Burgdorf, Switzerland (where it served as a private guest house), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Leipzig, Germany [GfZK], and its present, most spectacular spot, in Paris. This month, Basel-based Christoph Merian Verlag will publish a book about the project. Everland’s next stop—it’s scheduled to leave Palais de Tokyo in December 2008—is unknown, but Lang and Baumann tell ARTINFO they’d welcome it back in their studio, the epitome of a custom addition.

Over the last 10 years, you’ve developed several art projects, including Everland, that you call “real work.” What does that term mean to you?

It refers to the fact that our installations or objects can be “used” as furniture, libraries, or even, as in the case of Everland, a hotel room. We try to break the physical passivity the viewer of an artwork often has in a comfortable and joyful way. Once involved, the viewer is part of the work and starts looking at it with different criteria than he would if he were standing outside.

We also use the term for pieces connected to the “real world” process of building. We as artists do not see ourselves as the best people to make our art. Even if we have quite clear ideas on what we want to do, we like to integrate people from outside to help us discuss and define the borders of what is possible. Making art is a social process for us.

How did the idea for Everland come about?

We were invited to make an on-site art project for Expo.02. It was clear from the beginning that we wanted to do something related to the fantastic lake in Yverdon, so we created a site-specific installation that questioned the relationship between public and private space. It was important to us that the object be mobile, so we made a small and very exclusive spot for only two people. Still, we weren’t sure whether it would actually be able to travel—it’s small for a house, but for an art piece it is very expensive to move. Collaborations with the museums GfZK [the Museum of Contemporary Art in Leipzig] and Palais de Tokyo made that possible.

How did you settle on the retro-futurist design?

We like it, and we have the feeling we can reach people because it is not something totally new or exotic—viewers are familiar with it and can therefore participate faster. We also like the utopist aspect of this period: the belief in the future and the will to create something that is linked to science-fiction and new forms of existing ideas. We still think we added some new interpretations into it, like our cut “capsule” with one facade offering a view to the real world.

What else affected its design?

It’s created as a totally integrated piece. All the furniture is anchored, so nothing can be moved around or changed. The function of the room is strictly defined as a hotel room for people staying a maximum of one night (no cupboards!). The fact that the minibar is free, breakfast is delivered to the room, towels (embroidered with the name of the city the hotel is in) can be kept as souvenirs by guests, and there’s a record player with a record collection are all important details.

We wanted to make the room float: There are no doors inside, so everything is open, and the surfaces of the ceiling, walls, and floor are treated as the same, so there are round forms and rounded corners.

MoMA recently announced an exhibition of prefab housing—do you see this as an art-world trend?

Yes, but we don’t really feel that our project is so much a part of this discussion. Everland is more a prototype; we never intended to reproduce it. Also, it needs the collaboration of a museum and the hotel concept we made. To divide Everland into parts and only see it as architecture, as a shell, does not make sense to us.