25hours Hotel Zurich West

One day very soon it will go without saying that Zürich is much more than chocolate bars and fancy watches, but for now, a whimsical, high-concept design hotel geared toward the creative class is still something of an outlier, both figuratively and literally.

25hours Hotel Zurich West is located only ten minutes by public transit from the city center, but it feels a world away from the old city, the habitat of the bankers and the tourists.

The neighborhood’s backstory is familiar: a former industrial area where, in the mid-‘90s, the manufacturers moved out and the galleries, design shops, and performance spaces moved in, along with their staff and patrons. These days it’s full of many of the city’s hottest restaurants, bars and clubs, and home to an increasing number of hotels like 25hours.

But still, 25hours is a place all its own. This first Swiss outpost of the mostly German 25hours group is also the first full-scale hotel project by the beloved local designer Alfredo Häberli, best known for his novel re-makings of everyday objects like chairs and coat hangers and cutlery.

In another context, one such object would be merely a pleasant novelty, but cumulatively, their effect at 25hours is to pull guests into a world conjured by the sort of person who genuinely believes the coat hanger can be improved upon, both in form and function — and who turns out to be right.

It’s also clear that Häberli loves his adopted hometown, and the hotel’s conceit is that its interiors are a stylized Zürich in miniature. This plays out in whimsical allusions to the designer’s favorite local spots and to low-tech replicas of some of the city’s famous landmarks.

The room categories are silver, gold and platinum, a play on the city’s banking tradition, though you’re a lot more likely to find a turf-green carpet or a big egg-shaped bathtub than any precious metals.

As at 25hours’ other outposts, the prices here are lower than the local standard. Zürich’s hotels are infamously expensive, but if you’re willing to forgo nightly shoe-shines in favor of complimentary bike rentals and the like, 25hours offers excellent value — not cheap in any sense of the word, but a steal by local standards.

Main text (above) via Tablet Hotels.

in our opinion

Playful interiors of the 25hours Hotel Zurich West delight with surprising and inventive graphical details, artistic decorative elements and funky furniture that create a real sense of place, invoking the character of the hotel's arty neighborhood.

What we love

• Designer Alfredo Häberli left nothing to chance: every detail is thought through, in line with the overall design concept.
• Also keeping with the art direction, the hotel's gift shop offers cool gadgets, design objects, and inventive trinkets, as well as magazines and travel guides;
• Depending on availability, there are bicycles and Mini Coopers for hire—free of charge (this also includes fuel or the Coopers!)
• The rooftop spa and sauna, overlooking the city with the snow-capped Alps on the horizon.

What you should know

• Formerly an industrial zone, the up-and-coming Kreis 5 neighborhood—where the hotel is located—is now an edgy cultural center, crammed with theatres, galleries, trendy shops, and cafés.
• WiFi is available in all areas and is free of charge.
• Check-in time starts at 3 PM and ends at midnight.