Per Gessle

Joakim S Ormsmarck visited Åsa Gessle at Hotel Tylösand for an interview in the reborn Tylösand Magazine. Katja Cherkasova styled Åsa and Anders Sällström took some amazing photos of her.

Åsa loves black, but it should be soft and always with the guest and the heart in focus. Inspiration is drawn from hotels around the world, but also from the grass outside in the sand dunes and a striped Italian stone that was used to lay the foundation for the latest project.

July 1995. Two months earlier, Roxette’s second world tour had ended with two concerts at the Olympic Stadium in Moscow. The news hit like a bombshell, the unexpected duo Per Gessle and businessman Björn Nordstrand are buying Hotel Tylösand and they both emphasize that the reasons are both emotional and business oriented. Now the hotel is to be lifted to new levels and the one who immediately takes the challenge regarding colour, shape and ambience is Åsa Gessle.

Åsa and Joakim have settled down at Titus Tapas with a view of Solgården.

I have always loved hotels and we have stayed in so many different ones around the world, both privately and on tours. You learn a lot about what you want in a hotel room and what is good. Often it’s the small details and simple things that make the difference. When we bought the hotel, it felt like we were getting to enter that world and being able to start creating these ambiences.

It all began with the green apples. The apples and the toilet rolls in Strandhuset, but Joakim starts with the fruit, because it has become something of a green thread through the thirty years that have passed since the first ones landed in a bowl on the reception desk.

We loved a hotel in Miami Beach called Delano and I was hooked, because in every room they had a small stand on the wall with a green apple with the sign “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. Even though this was a real party hotel, they had thought of this little detail.

Hotel Tylösand in 1995 was, however, quite a long way from an exclusive beach hotel à la Miami. Åsa talks with an undertone of laughter about stuffed birds, artificial plants and pink carpets with fish patterns. From the ceiling in the restaurant hung heavy burgundy curtains which, when taken down, turned out to have collected a lot of dust over the years. But the old stuff went out and the new was introduced step by step.

Joakim asks about those toilet rolls and Åsa smiles.

It’s one of the strongest memories from when we took over. This was the old strip along the beach and when you entered the toilet in the rooms, there was a mirror straight in and on a little shelf underneath they had lined up extra toilet paper rolls. So what you saw was yourself and the toilet paper. We bought holders and put them next to the toilets instead and then it was solved.

This whole thing about creating ambiences and working with interior design has always been a part of Åsa Gessle’s life. From dollhouses as a child at home in Trelleborg, to when she was 13 years old, she went around the shops in town and asked if she could do their shop windows, which she did and gave it her all. But Joakim comes back to the mid ’90s.

The first major project after we had removed all the stuffed birds, and cleaned endlessly as I remember it, was to take care of the hotel rooms. Architect Johnny Andersson and I started sketching and that was the first time I realized that my preferences didn’t always match everyone else’s, haha.

I like black, but our CEO at the time was clear that we have so many business people as guests so it has to be blue. And I hate blue. The compromise was cherry with a blue bedspread and I realized that I didn’t know the industry the way he did and the guests always come first.

With a smile, Åsa notes that the blackness was gradually incorporated so that blue would be appreciated more by the guests than black, she has never found any evidence for this. Blackness has become her signature in design and it permeates all aspects, it has even become so that the concept of Åsa black is now available as a color in the local paint store.

Joakim is curious what sets this blackness apart from all other blackness. Åsa shows and lifts a pillow against the black wall.

There is a little brown in it to make the black warm.

And of course the difference is visible now that we know about it.

If you just look at this sofa, you probably won’t see it, but it becomes softer to the eye and I feel like we ground ourselves through the black. Then we can contrast with a tulip, a pillow or a green apple. And sometimes we play around with some natural colours, but the black is always there as a base.

Today, Åsa sees herself as a Creative Director for the hotel and is involved in everything related to the interior design, new construction and renovations. Here she works closely with architects, cabinetmakers and craftsmen. A way of working that has existed since the Gessle family designed and built their own villa.

Our first project was Per’s and my rental apartment on Torsgatan in Halmstad. The house was to be renovated and we were given the opportunity to merge two apartments, design and choose materials the way we wanted it.

Then when we were going to build our house we were recommended to contact Abelardo Gonzalez and we did. We visited him and the house was not our style, but on the other hand his architecture was very exciting. He did things differently and he has such an openness in his way of thinking. So he drew and we adjusted. We worked very closely throughout the whole process and I have learned so much from him.

One lesson that stuck is that everything can be built. Even though others said it was impossible, Abelardo Gonzalez didn’t listen and he built, an attitude that fits well with Åsa Gessle’s determination and conviction. Like the blackness, for example. Today, Åsa herself draws much of what is being built at Hotel Tylösand. As long as it is not structural construction, it is her drawings that are used.

We do as much as we can ourselves, then it will be the way we want it. When it comes to water and sewage, electricity and such, we bring in external help. The same thing as when I design a bar, I know how it should look but then everything has to work for the people who work there with machines and all the functions. Then I work together with, for example, Kay Linghoff, who I have worked with a lot over the years.

To Joakim’s question regarding how much time Åsa spends at the hotel, she replies:

I’m here a lot. It’s been a little less now when we are on tour, but otherwise I feel like I’m here almost all the time. I want to make sure the ambiences are as they should be. In a hotel, things have a tendency to move around all the time, and then I have to carry the chairs back, fix the cushions and stuff like that, haha.

This particular laugh recurs often during the conversation. It’s clear that Åsa is truly passionate about the hotel and the experience, and that she finds it just as much fun today as it was thirty years ago when the green apples first appeared.

Everything is in the details and often there are details that you don’t see as a guest, but you experience them anyway. Like cleaning, you don’t think about it when it works, but if you have ever stayed in a hotel where it didn’t work, you know it’s noticeable right away.

Joakim asks Åsa about the cushions.

We have a karate chop that needs to be done, so that the pillow gets its fold. Then the zipper should always be downwards, and I have to struggle with that a bit. But like I said, it’s all in the details.

One of the hotel’s major projects in recent years is the completely new SPA department, which was inaugurated last year. Both floors have received a major facelift and Åsa says that one of the goals was to connect the interior with the sea, which is so close, but still on the other side of the large glass areas.

I think many SPAs are a bit boring, our spa should be like the rest of the hotel. A little cozier and a little more Asian, a social SPA where everyone can enjoy themselves.

Åsa tells of a dinner just after the inauguration. She was sitting with Per and eating when a family came up to thank them for the experience. Or rather, the children wanted to thank them.

They were lyrical and described it as them never being able to go to a SPA before and now it was like being at a nightclub with music, a cinema in the pool and so on. It was something different from the bathhouses they had visited before.

When she started planning the new SPA:

It started with me finding an Italian black and white striped stone that really laid the foundation for everything. Materials are important in a SPA, like the Kolmården marble that has its motion in the pattern and meets the grass outside on the sand dunes.

Above the pool, the lighting forms a heart. A heart that Åsa originally wanted to have at the bottom of the pool, but which was not possible for technical reasons. It is now reflected in the water surface instead, creating a completely new effect.

The heart is in a lot of my designs, I guess no one has been able to escape that. It probably reflects me quite a bit, but also the feeling we want it to have here at the hotel. It should be warm, cozy and absolutely not stiff and boring. The heart has to be in there.

Thirty years have passed since that July in 1995. The projects have succeeded one after the other, and perhaps a feeling of satiety could have set in now that everything is finished. But that thought doesn’t seem to have even crossed Åsa’s mind or any of her colleagues’ minds.

It can always be developed and I always have ideas that stretch a number of years into the future.

Åsa concludes and points across Solgården towards the SPA building.

There I would like to build a sun deck with only glass sections around it. I have seen exactly one like that at a hotel in Sao Paulo. It is really cool, so we must have it here in Tylösand too. People will love it!

All interview text is written by Joakim S Ormsmarck for Tylösand Magazine in Swedish. Here it is a translation by RoxBlog.

Thanks a lot for helping out with the physical copy of the magazine, Chrissie Röhrs!