Loft 523 (www.loft523.com) is the quintessential loft hotel. It's a sexy, sophisticated sanctuary. It's New Orleans' newest boutique hotel, and it just raised the design bar substantially. Its understated design stimulates the spirit and heightens the senses.

Like International House (www.ihhotel.com) before it, Loft 523 begins with a strong idea. This time it's about soaring spaces. Pure lofts--designed with an edge, modern electronics, architectural artifacts, and a local take on concealing and revealing the individual character of the building. These 18 lofts, including three penthouses, stand in tribute to loft style, and offer each guest a stunning urban canvas sure to set the design muse free.

Open Space
Space and proportion are the touchstones of architecture. This cavernous old carriage and dry-goods warehouse at 523 Gravier Street, one of the Central Business District's pioneering architectural designs in its day (circa 1880), has undergone extensive remodeling and restoration over a ten-month period.

Space is the essence of a great loft and of Loft 523. Rooms average 600 square feet, with spacious spa-like bathrooms topping 120 square feet. Each guest loft has great sex appeal: it is both intimate and expansive. Hand-hammered copper doors mark entries that have all been lowered from the original, industrial height to a more human scale, creating a dramatic transition into the massive space of each room, with 12-foot ceilings boosting the sense of volume and elevating the human spirit. Floor-to-ceiling windows bathe each room in natural light. The walls are painted with warm whites to accentuate the openness. In every inch of the hotel, one is reminded of David Hockney's words, "Our perception of space has incredible effects on us. Ultimately, it is about our identity: who we are and why we are. Not a mere matter."

Design Lab
Loft 523 is also about design, lasting style, and edge. The rooms are in harmony with natural structure, a "shelter" for the soul, as well as for the body. As one critic wrote, "Design must seduce, shape, and perhaps most important, evoke emotional response." From Modern Fan Company's 52-inch opal-glass ceiling fans to legendary photographer/painter/chemist/Renaissance man Mariano Fortune's acclaimed 1907 Fortuny lamp, to Agape's acclaimed "Spoon" tubs in spacious spa-like bathrooms in all Superior room types accessories and king beds by Mondo, Loft 523 is a joyous celebration of design and the emotional response it elicits. The bed and its wenge sidetables, like all of the furnishings, are low to the ground - anchors of stability set to a scale that accentuates soaring space. The headboard is covered in textured mocha and cream intreccio fabric, while the bed itself is a divine combination of triple-sheeted Frette linens, king-size pillows, and one decadently luxurious throw. Arranged in harmonious seating areas, a variety of different chairs of Italian design and a custom-made ebonized pecan wood desk with an award-winning Herman Miller desk chair contribute to the uniqueness of each guest accommodation.

Architecture is the Art
At Loft 523, texture and material are highlighted, not homogenized. In the guest rooms, plaster walls, sprinkler pipes, columns, and heavy-timber beams tell a story. In the bar, original cast-iron columns, wide-plank flooring, masonry archways, and a pressed metal ceiling recycled as an elevator cab continue to weave the tale. It is one of texture, material, and a keen sense of place. They are architectural artifacts that speak to the human continuum: those who sold carriages here a century ago, those here today, and those yet to come. The attentive way these pieces have been retained suggests that modern New Orleans might not be "The City That Care Forgot."

Modern Electronics
In addition to open space, great design, and artifacts, Loft 523 is a high-tech playground. Sony cd/dvd surround-sound systems are standard features. A flat panel plasma television graces the penthouse wall. Thanks to carefully positioned antennae, from anywhere in the hotel, bar, and even around the corner at the state-of-the-art conference center that Loft 523 shares with International House, one can access the internet at more than 3 megabites on Loft 523's blazing wireless network-significantly faster than dial-up and DSL access. For travelers whose laptops do not have wireless capability, Loft 523 provides the necessary programming on a CD, as well as a special PC card to rocket onto the net. The lobby showcases Apple's new iMac, a visually stunning signal that this is a hotel replete with high-tech toys.

Rejuvenation and Renewal
Lined in large limestone sheets, the cavernous bathroom beckons from the loft space. The shower, with two heads, is large enough for two, and houses a teak bench piled high with plush white towels. The monolithic stone vanity top floats out from the wall, and opposite, the serene, high-sided tub is sculpted from a single, breathtaking piece of creamy Italian marble resin. The textured limestone is richly organic, while other surfaces of natural materials likewise thrill the senses.

Concealment and Revelation
This is a hotel that speaks subtly to concealment, revelation, and pleasant surprise. Much like nearby anonymous French Quarter façades, which conceal a secret world of courtyards, fountains, gardens, and guesthouses, Loft 523 conceals then carefully reveals each design surprise. One walks in and is pulled alluringly through the bar to its private grotto room hidden by an old fire door. Entering the lobby one is drawn past 14' cast iron columns, boxed in glass, toward public bathrooms with sandblasted glass walls separating M from W, the entry doors of which are inspired by a Tibetan medicine bracelet. The lofts are numbered in a 1A, 2B sequence like private apartments. The penthouses open through shimmering hammered copper doors and spill out onto rooftop terraces with self-sustaining aquatic gardens, where blooming jasmine scent the air, another change of environment inducing peaceful reverie. In Penthouses 1 and 3, the sculpted bathtubs are set in front of a 6' x 6' glass window screened with equisetum, offering a skyline sense of splendid isolation.

Service
At check-in, the front desk manager gives each guest a business card with the name and title of his or her "personal assistant" for the length of the visit. No matter your request, consider it done.

Sanctuary
Loft 523 is a sublime sanctuary in which to dream peacefully, enjoy solitude or togetherness, think creatively, or just be. Whether you want your loft to act as a decompression chamber or to stimulate your senses through the unique combination of design, texture, and technology, Loft 523 presents a place to be who you are. Make our space your space.