QR-Code Hotel Room
by Antoine Peters

In the most extreme example yet of QR codes used as decor, the new Hotel Modez in Arnhem has a room covered entirely in scannable codes that link to “pornography, pin-ups and other piquancies”.

The room, designed by fashion designer Antoine Peters, features bespoke wallpaper, curtains, bed linen and furniture entirely covered in the black-and-white symbols, which can be read by smartphones and other devices to reveal pornographic images, texts and movies.

“The room seems as abstract as it can be, but secretly you are surrounded by porn,” says Peters. “The abstraction of the room symbolizes the fact piquancies are always extracted from the eye, but I think these just belong to hotel rooms. And anyway, aren’t we surrounded by porn everywhere nowadays?

The room features pillows and fabrics created in collaboration with Daphne de Jong while Quinze & Milan produced square stools with a QR-codes laser-cut into their surfaces.

The QR-Code room was commissioned by creative studio Piet Paris, who invited 30 Dutch fashion designers, most of whom are based in Arnhem or are graduates of the city’s Arnhem Art Academy, to each curate a room.

The hotel, which opened last week, is based in the city’s Klarendal district, a once run-down area that is now an emerging fashion quarter.

Other recent examples of QR codes used in architecture and interiors include the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, which featured an interior entirely covered with a matrix of codes, and call centre in Dijon by architects MVRDV, which features QR-code cladding.

Photography is by Eva Broekema.

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• Interiors