Meet our designers

The Teaching Hotel is connected to the Hotel School in Maastricht and offers 26 hotel rooms. The unique rooms have been designed by various well-known or emerging Dutch designers. They were given complete creative control. As a result, no single hotel room is the same. Here we proudly tell you more.

THCB doorkijk.jpg

D/Dock > room 21, 22, 23, 24

Designers Francesco Messori and Martijn Jans of D/Dock

Ddock kamer 23 Mind L.jpg

“We believe in a company with ethical values. We are a team without frontiers or hierarchy. We assume at the outset that our work is a shared experience. We believe in a positive tension between dreaming and creating. We believe in the value of humanity as part of professionalism. We believe in the need for experience and young enthusiasm. We believe in the need for a mix of local and international.”

D/Dock designed the following rooms on the theme of ‘feeding the soul’:

Room 21 – Craft
Room 22 – Body (suite)
Room 23 – Mind
Room 24 – Heart

Studio Job > room 12, 14, 15

Studio Job L.jpgStudio Job as founded in 2000 by Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel, both graduates of the Design Academy Eindhoven. Now based in Antwerp and in the Netherlands, their work is highly expressive, usually one off or limited-edition artesian works, often cast in bronze or finely constructed laser-cut marquetry. The works project a strong narrative, depicting good and evil fantastical stories. Their work has been added to several major collections and exhibitions worldwide, including solo exhibitions in New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Milan, Geneva, Miami and Basel.

Although, by definition, their work has primarily been geared towards collectors and museums, Studio Job has collaborated successfully with various like minded brands. Studio Job’s work has been shown internationally in numerous museums. They have recently opened their own curatorial exhibition space for contemporary art and design based in Antwerp. Here their own work and also that of other designers and artists is shown.

Studio Job designed three hotel rooms with the overarching theme ‘Paper Suites’:

Room 12 – Paper Suite ‘Maik’
Room 14 – Paper Suite ‘Lenny’
Room 15 – Paper Suite ‘Adri’

Piet Hein Eek > room 17, 18, 19, 25

Piet Hein Eek One Colour L.jpg

Piet Hein Eek graduated from the Design Academy in Endhoven in 1990 with a cupboard made of scrap wood. Shortly afterwards, together with his partner Nob Ruijgrok, he set up his own company specialising in furniture production and completing commissions for clients in the Netherlands and abroad.

In the nineteen-nineties, the coffee shop of New York’s Museum of Modern Art displayed furniture by Piet Hein Eek. The rooms designed by Piet Hein Eek play with colour, objects and standard products of the hotel business.

Piet Hein Eek designed the following four rooms:
Room 17 – Family Room
Room 18 – Hotel Standard
Room 19 – One Colour
Room 25 – Hotel Object

Richard Hutten > room 9, 10, 11

Richard Hutten groene kamer L.jpgRichard Hutten started at the Design Academy in Eindhoven at the age of 17. After graduating in 1991, he opened his own design studio in Eindhoven.

A few years later, he moved to Rotterdam where he lives and works now. Richard Hutten has a wide variety of clients, such as Donna Karan in New York, KPN Nederland, The Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) and the Centraal Museum in Utrecht.

Richard Hutten designed the following three rooms:
Room 9 – Bathroom
Room 10 – Green room
Room 11 – Black room

Makkink & Bey > room 1, 2, 3, 4

Jurgen Bey Fremdkorper L.jpgJurgen Bey graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven and then started Studio Jurgen Bey. In 2002, he founded Studio Makkink & Bey with Rianne Makkink. Their projects focus on a detailed integration of architecture and design. Their clients are predominantly Dutch.

Bey also teaches at the Royal College of Art in London. Jurgen Bey always analyses the objects around him. He is touched by their beauty and sees no reason to add new objects to existing objects. His preference goes out to creating a new world of things with which we are already familiar.

Jurgen Bey on the four rooms that he designed:
“Hotels and hotel rooms have to be able to swiftly become home for a constant flow of guests. For this reason, rooms are often designed to a standard that is repeated in every other room. The personal character of home is hardly even approached if nothing in the room is given extra attention or emphasis. In the four interiors of rooms 1, 2, 3 and 4, Studio Makkink & Bey has made mutual uniform relationships between the furniture more fanciful so that each room has acquired a specific character and has become an individual world. Interference has been minimal so that the room remains recognisable as a hotel room and the situation affords only a short glimpse of an illogical world than can be home for a week or a weekend.”

Room 1 – Push Start
Room 2 – Fremdkörper
Room 3 – Bedspread Frontier
Room 4 – Crayon Room

Gerben van der Molen > room 30, 31

Gerben van der Molen Suite in the Park L.jpgGerben van der Molen is a self-taught designer and trained in the hospitality industry at the Hotel School (1982-1986) after dropping out of his architecture course. Following his training, he returned to design with the encouragement of the management of the Sonesta Hotel in Amsterdam. After two years’ working for MAB, the Netherlands’ most influential urban developer at the time, he then spent three years as Development Manager at Transautex, the master franchisee of Burger King in the Netherlands.

In 1994, he started Stars Design as a design agency for shops, restaurants and hotels. He has completed many projects since then, firstly in fast food for Burger King, New York Pizza and KFC, and later larger projects in the hospitality industry such as Stroom Rotterdam, Orbis Medical Park in Sittard, the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Dordrecht, SS Rotterdam in Rotterdam and Equipe in Zwolle.

Gerben van der Molen designed the following two suites:
Room 30 – Suite in the park
Room 31 – Cut the crap suite

Merkx & Girod > room 5, 6, 7, 8

Iris Derks L.jpgDesigner Evelyne Merkx was 32 when she began her course on Architectural Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. From 1985 to 1995, she had her own company, Studio Merkx, and then started to collaborate with her partner Patrice Girod in the firm Merkx+Girod in Amsterdam. From 2000 to 2002, Merkx taught at the Design Academy in Eindhoven.

Evelyne Merkx designed the following four rooms with the overall theme hard/soft, matt/shining:
Room 5 - hard/soft, matt/shining
Room 6 - hard/soft, matt/shining
Room 7 - hard/soft, matt/shining
Room 8 - hard/soft, matt/shining

Fleur Muris & Marcel van Neer > room 16, 20

Fleur Muris Marcel van Neer L.jpg

Fleur Muris en Marcel van Neer ​​​​​​both graduated from the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design and now work for iNeXarchitecten, a team of architects based in Maastricht. The designs of Fleur and Marcel are not typified by spectacular features but by refinement, tranquillity, minimalism and serenity in which they try to create a feeling of stratification. They embed their designs in their environment and use factors such as orientation, contemplation and surroundings to bring variation.

Fleur Muris and Marcel van Neer on the four rooms that they designed:
“The starting point for our design was the students of the Maastricht Hotel Management School, who are being trained for a successful career in the international hotel industry. We not only want our designs to inspire them to look at the possibilities and trends for the future but also that they guarantee a certain degree of hospitality. Our mission is: ‘professionals in hospitality’, a different point of view.

A visit to our room is also a visit to South Limburg – a region that attaches great importance to hospitality. The room is not something that’s interchangeable and could just as easily be in London, Madrid or Brussels. The concept is geared to the location and the design addresses the space and its specific characteristics.

We’ve found hospitality in the human interaction between the personnel, the student and the hotel guest. This is inspired by the ryokans, the traditional guesthouses in Japan that are famed for their legendary service. In the Ryokan, only the essential things are present. This simplicity enables the guest to find perfect peace.

We want to stimulate a particular sort of hospitality on the part of the personnel – a hospitality that is different to what normally happens in a hotel. The host must walk with the guest to the room while explaining the use of the room, just like the personnel in the ryokan.

The rooms are furnished with wooden furniture modules that combine all of the essential facilities. It is a challenge for the guest to discover this piece of furniture. Both of the rooms designed by us have their own individual character.”

Fleur Muris and Marcel van Neer designed two rooms:
Room 16 – Simplicity and Hospitality
Room 20 – Simplicity and Hospitality

Leon de Lange > restaurant L'Etoile

Leon de Lange restaurant L.jpg

Leon de Lange graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven in June 2008, majoring in Man and Living. He completed his internship at the design studio Makkink & Bey in 2006 where he has been working as a designer since graduating. He builds concepts and thinks with his hands. He masters the 1:100 world with a pair of tweezers just as completely as the 1:1 world with a chain saw. He has a penchant for calligraphy.

Leon de Lange on his design for the L’Etoile restaurant:
“The restaurant in the school. The restaurant that is also a lesson. Welcoming guests in the classroom. Full of protocols, serving techniques and etiquette. Order, agreements and anticipating situations. Hierarchy, professional knowledge and helpfulness. The guest is put first, and if he feels that he is being put first, the student feels more important. Quiet fame. The intention behind the sketched proposal was to give this fame its own showcase. An individual piece of furniture adjusted to his specific task. The different tasks in the hierarchy are gathered together and grouped centrally in the restaurant in the mis en place. Everyone knows his responsibilities in his physical part of the restaurant. The furniture refers directly to what, for me, is a specific person, an attitude that I found during my research into the day-to-day business of the restaurant. The restaurant seems to fulfil a reverse function: it is not the pupils who are sitting on the school benches but those who are judging them. The pupil is in charge.”  

Bart Hagevoort > hotel bar Le Coin

Bart Hagevoort Le Coin L.jpg

Bart Hagevoort ​​​​​​is an interior designer at Heineken. He designed the bar-lounge Le Coin at the Teaching Hotel.

The idea behind this was that the authentic ceiling gives the available space an effect of width, which would be split in two lengthways. The focus would be on the students working behind the bar, so that they would appear to be working on a ‘stage’. The seating height for customers at the bar is slightly lower so that they become an audience. Working together with lighting designer Etienne Bindels, Bart created a lighting plan that produces the right atmosphere both in daylight or artificial light. The lighting is perfect for guests coming for breakfast/lunch and a drink during the day or for creating a club atmosphere for the restaurant and hotel guests in the evening.

Bart Vos > public spaces

Bart Vos openbare ruimte L.jpg

Bart Vos graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. In 1996, he set up Vos Interieur Maupertuus. Now he is the creative director of this business, whose substantial, unusual collection makes it unique in Europe.

The client’s wishes are always the starting point for the interior or product that has to be designed. The work of Bart Vos is typified by its clear style in which simple, architectonic shapes dominate. He uses a number of steps to reduce the basic principles of the design to their most basic form. In both his interior designs and his product designs, all superfluous elements are eliminated so that the core of the design remains. In spite of this, his products and designs are eminently practical and functional. Both form and user-comfort play a major role.

“The corridors are only a simple means of access to the rooms. That’s where the real fun takes place, of course,” says Bart Vos, who designed the public areas of the hotel. This is why he kept his design sober and restrained. “In most hotels the corridors are stuffed with little paintings and large vases full of flowers. Here this would only disrupt the tension that these extraordinary surroundings evoke. In fact all of the corridors overlook the beautiful courtyard.”

Luc Coenegracht > meeting rooms

Luc Coenegracht vergaderruimtes L.jpg

Luc Coenegracht ​​​​​​used to teach Construction & Interior Design at the Hotel Management School Maastricht before he retired in 2022. Luc Coenegracht designed the meeting rooms at the Teaching Hotel. These rooms are suitable for use by groups up to a maximum of 7 or 8 people.

Meeting rooms L'Une and L'Autre:
Their identical size and shape were the starting point for a sober but similar interpretation. Moreover, Luc opted for complementary colours for these rooms, which resulted in two contrasting rooms with a shared relationship. These colours are also reflected in the soft furnishings. The relationship of these two rooms is also expressed in their names.The furniture provides an entirely individual character that is reinforced by the unique smell of these two rooms.

Meeting rooms Les 5 Sens and Le Cabinet:
The starting point here was the theme of sensitivity. By selectively deploying smell, colour, light, sound and ICT, Luc has ensured that meetings will be more than just meetings. He turns them into an experience.
Both rooms draw on the rich history of the Hotel School: in ‘Les 5 sens’, the old castle floor has been reused; ‘Le Cabinet’ mirrors objects, photos and documents that illustrate the 60-year history of the Hotel School. Sustainability and the use of used materials are reflected in the use of packaging materials such as wine cases as display cases and wall units. Use was also made of advanced, energy-efficient LED lighting.

Henk Vos > art director

Henk Vos.jpg

The art direction for the Teaching Hotel was provided by designer Henk Vos who also designed the Kruisherenhotel in Maastricht.

Henk Vos (1939) studied interior design at the Academy of Fine Art in Rotterdam. From 1963 to 2006, with his family, he led a leading interior design agency, ‘Vos Interieur Maupertuus’ in Groningen. One important division of Vos Interieur is the interior design bureau that carries out projects for private and corporate clients in the Netherlands and abroad. Clients include Sanoma/VNU, Achmea, Agis, Essent, the Kruisherenhotel and TNT.

Apart from this, Henk is also a successful industrial designer for various well-known brands such as Linteloo, Hugues Chevalier and the Dutch Gelderland Group. His first sofa, the 4800, that he designed for the Dutch Gelderland Group in 1983 is still one of the most successful models in their collection. The 4800 has been included in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. What sets Henk Vos’ designs apart are their simple shapes and uncluttered lines. ‘Better empty than ugly’ is the motto of this designer whose designs endure not only because of their timeless beauty but also because of their use of high-quality materials.