Mari Balestrazzi, boutique hotel design genius, has designed a Semi-Automatic vending machine for the Morgans Hotel Group’s Mondrian South Beach hotel in Miami.
Swipe your credit card and it dispenses a variety of luxury items such as 24-karat gold handcuffs from Kiki de Montparnasse, Fred Flare heart sunglasses or a 14-karat gold necklace by Kiel Mead.
Balestrazzi, known for his vision hotels as very personal experiences at a boutique scale through movie-set like vignettes (see gallery), envisions the luxury automat as an alternative to the traditional hotel gift shop.
The automat — that ’50s-era icon of American ingenuity known for vending rubbery sandwiches from glass compartments — is back, and this time it’s boutique. Exhibit A: The most opulent and cheeky element of the Mondrian South Beach, a Marcel Wanders-designed hotel that opened in Miami in December, is a vending machine that now anchors the lobby. The Semi-Automatic was designed not by Wanders but by Ito Partnership for the Morgans Hotel Group, to conquer the cliché of the gift shop.
(themoment.blogs.nytimes)
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