Wannabe astronauts can now lodge at Kameha Grand Zurich's luxury space station for a cool $2000 a night, which is a bargain compared to a commercial spaceflight of $250,000.
Masterminded by Berlin-based photographic artist and aspiring astronaut, Michael Najjar, the Suite is kitted out to look like the inside of a space station and is designed to give guests a glimmer of life in outer space, without the motion sickness or bland NASA food.
Exclusively situated on the 5th floor of the Kameha Grand Zurich, the Space Suite has been designed to look as futuristic as possible, merging technology from the real world, with visual references to the sci-fi genre.
Black galaxies dust the white walls and ceiling, whilst rocket engine spotlights illuminate the living room, and a universe motif adorns the carpet – featuring high resolution images from the Hubble Space Telescope, which have been stitched together to create a fictive universe.
Something spacetacular
There’s even a shelf shaped like a space glove, to hold phones or key cards. The celestial theme extends to the bathroom too, where you can soak in a steam bath, designed to simulate a view into the universe. The artist’s fascination with all things space travel and the mystique of cosmology even transcends to guests reading material - Najjar has handpicked books, films and audiobooks from both fiction and non-fiction genres, themed on space travel, technology and adventures.
The Suite’s pièce de résistance, however, has to be the floating sleeping module, designed to look like the Monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. And the sci-fi cues don’t end there – guests or crew members are greeted by a robotic female voice (in 8 different variations), inspired by John Carpenters 1974 film, Dark Star. In keeping with the hotel’s sensory experience, the Space Suite also gets a live stream from the International Space Station and a direct link to NASA TV, so forget the news surfing and Netflix.
Art lovers, meanwhile, will appreciate the three original artworks on show, entitled ‘Liquid Gravity’, ‘Space Voyagers’ and ‘Orbital Cascade’ - taken from Najjar’s most recent project Outer Space. The artist may have conquered the globe with his acclaimed art on display across museums, biennials and galleries worldwide, but his otherworldly vision is set on the interstellar.
Najjar is on track to become the first contemporary artist in space, as one of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Pioneer Astronauts, and has undergone intensive cosmonaut training in Russia for the last 3 years, in preparation for his civilian journey into the great beyond.
There is even a mock up of Branson’s futuristic SpaceShipTwo by Virgin Atlantic, on display in the Suite, together with rockets like the Russian Soyuz and V2. One thing’s for sure - Najjar’s luxury take on lunar exploration looks a lot more comfortable than a night spent in the real International Space Station.
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