Guiding Light

From ancient Egypt to the pre-Columbian Americas, sun-worship has influenced art, poetry and design – and over the centuries, we’ve become no less in thrall, chasing its light and warmth all summer long and beyond. Some of us might land at Le Soleia, a new hotel in Nice, where designer Oscar Lucien Ono of Maison Numéro 20 has explicitly taken the sun as his guiding light.

For the project, which occupies an art deco building on Avenue Victor Hugo, Ono wanted to avoid some of the clichés of Riviera hotel design. “My intention was not to replicate a frozen image of the Côte d’Azur, but to capture its soul: solar warmth, lightness, that tranquil energy radiating from ochre facades, pastel shutters, and the shadows filtered through louvered blinds,” he says.

In the lobby, visitors are greeted by a sunshine-infused space, with a life-sized wicker palm-tree light and a ceiling decorated with laser-cut pieces of painted wood, with sun motifs linked by loose ribbon-like shapes. Ono says that this ceiling is “the central element that captures the essence of our project. It expresses both a sense of movement and a certain dynamism that envelops the space.”

The palette is natural and neutral, with some pastel shades that bring the Niçois surroundings inside, inspired by the soft pale green of local shutters or darker green for the restaurant, emulating a palm grove. Artist Raphael Schmitt’s stylised palm trees painted on the lobby walls have that hot, lazy feel of leafy shadows cast on centuries-old sandy-coloured stonework.

It’s tonal, but never a bland backdrop thanks to subtle shifts in colour and an abundance of texture. “In a hospitality space, the tactile dimension becomes an additional emotion: the softness of a crumpled fabric, the roughness of plaster, the warmth of wood, or the delicacy of ceramics,” says Ono. “These sensations create an intimate, almost sensual connection with the space. Texture is what transforms a setting into an experience, a hotel into a refuge. It makes the atmosphere alive, human, and invites the visitor to slow down, to feel.”

There’s a vintage quality to a lot of the furniture, like the bun-footed slipper chairs at the foot of the beds, the curving sofas the lobby or the generous use of rattan – but there are classical references here, too. Ono was influenced by Villa Kérylos, the Greek revival house (now a museum) in nearby Beaulieu-sur-Mer: fluted surfaces, pedestals used to display sculptural objects, and curtain trims by Michael Aiduss for Houlès that were directly inspired by the house’s architectural detail are just three of the ways that the designer has brought the villa’s essence to the hotel.

Sunbursts and stars are the thread that runs through everything, on plaster relief-panels in the dining room, as fabric on the back of bar stools or mounted above guest beds. Bathed in sunlight and with all that warmth and tactility, it all has a dream-like quality.

“Of course, the spirit of the Riviera is present – the light, the sea, the Mediterranean gentleness – but I was determined to go beyond postcard clichés,” says Ono. “I wanted to offer travellers not a stereotypical setting, but a sensory experience that tells the story of the South’s simple, universal beauty.”