Review

The transparent glass floor in the back lobby hangs directly over the subterranean pool below, which gets the heart beating nicely before you head down past the pool itself to the basement bar; here, you stand suspended on industrial grid metal over the building’s vast anti-fire water tanks. Floorless design from Ernesto Goransky, you could say.

And the next-door Design Suites & Towers hotel (see below) has something else to add, along the lines of ‘to say we are a little angry is an understatement’. Having designed their hotel in 1999, seven years later Ernesto designed the Design CE along the same lines.

The Design Suites & Towers have since filed a lawsuit. But this is not your problem. The lawsuit may be born more out of envy than anything else, because Design CE is ever so slightly more stylish, taking the playful minimalist concept to another level with its downstairs amenities.

The one-upmanship is across the board, with larger suites (56 square metres) and a pool that is – unlike its neighbour’s – for swimming in. You cannot, however, squirt the hoses in the ‘fireman’s bar’, which rejoices in the name of the ‘Design Club’.

Accommodation ranges from standard rooms with views of the dramatic Ministry of the Economy and Rodriguez Peña square, to the penthouse suite – a minimalist bunker loft with a balcony.