Design Background
Thumbelina navigates through an unpredictable world—captured, confined, and ultimately freed into a realm of belonging—this boutique hotel creates a layered spatial experience, where visitors transition from mystery and enclosure to openness and delight.
Rooted in Thumbelina, Thistle & Bloom draws from the story’s exploration of scale, shelter, and belonging—where a fragile protagonist navigates a world that is at once tender and overwhelming. Rather than retelling the narrative literally, the design extracts its emotional logic and spatial metaphors, translating them into a contemporary interior language.
Design Experience
The design experience was structured as a journey rather than a collection of rooms. By organizing space through gradual transitions in scale, enclosure, and movement, the project explores how guests emotionally navigate an environment—from moments of compression and uncertainty to openness and relief.
Design Strategies
Thumbelina navigates through an unpredictable world—captured, confined, and ultimately freed into a realm of belonging—this boutique hotel creates a layered spatial experience, where visitors transition from mystery and enclosure to openness and delight.
Lobby Rendered Perspective
Design Story
These are people who have flexed a lot of creative muscle over the years in entertainment and fashion. They asked us to make the house less heavy and ornate, and more appropriate for modern family – something friendly and warm.”
Cocatail Bar
Private Booth
The cocktail bar is conceived as a transitional space that introduces guests into the narrative world of the hotel. A linear spatial sequence, combined with reflective surfaces, filtered lighting, and layered vegetation, creates a sense of gradual immersion. Rather than offering immediate openness, the bar compresses perspective and elongates movement, allowing guests to slow down and recalibrate their senses. This controlled progression establishes an atmosphere of anticipation—marking the first step from the outside world into a more intimate, story-driven interior.
In contrast, the private booths are designed as moments of retreat and emotional enclosure. Curved bird cage forms, lowered ceilings, and softened material palettes create a cocoon-like environment that encourages stillness and privacy. By reducing visual exposure and acoustically buffering each booth, the space reinforces a sense of being held within the architecture. This shift from movement to pause reflects the project’s broader design strategy—using spatial intimacy and bodily comfort to foster a feeling of belonging rather than spectacle.
A Peak
“A lowered vantage point transforms the bar into a quiet spectacle—seen through shadow, framed by light.”
Guest Room
Stepping into the guest rooms of Thistle & Bloom is like entering a hidden storybook world—where textures, colors, and forms blend to create an enchanting, immersive escape. Inspired by Thumbelina’s journey, the space balances cozy intimacy and whimsical grandeur, inviting guests into a realm where nature and fantasy intertwine.
At the heart of the room, the sculptural alcove bed, framed by a gentle arch, cradles its occupant in a protective cocoon—much like the hollow of a tree or the soft petals of a flower embracing Thumbelina.
Overhead, handcrafted lighting, inspired by twisting vines and delicate branches, casts soft, dappled shadows, mimicking the play of light filtering through a forest canopy.
Material Plan
Design Story
“The guestroom unfolds not as a static enclosure, but as a quiet journey—
from compression to release, from concealment to belonging.”
The guestroom is conceived as an immersive interior landscape shaped by thresholds, curvature, and controlled visibility. Rather than presenting the space all at once, the design choreographs a gradual reveal—where arched passages, softened edges, and layered textures guide the body inward. This sequence draws from Thumbelina’s journey, translating moments of uncertainty and refuge into spatial conditions that are felt physically rather than narrated explicitly.
At the heart of the room, the built-in alcove bed becomes both furniture and architecture, functioning as a place of rest and emotional grounding. Material choices—velvets, carved wood, and muted metallic accents—enhance tactility and warmth, reinforcing a sense of enclosure without heaviness. Through this balance of intimacy and openness, the room invites guests to slow down, withdraw, and reconnect, positioning hospitality as an experience shaped by atmosphere, memory, and the body.
The End
“The journey finds its rest not in spectacle, but in belonging.
The space becomes home.”
