Public Hotel Chicago

Low-cost luxury in a renovated Chicago landmark

Fed up with the overpriced minibars and underacheiving service standards that plague the American hotel industry, Studio 54 co-founder Ian Schrager recently unrolled Public, an affordable luxury hotel in downtown Chicago. Schrager reclaimed the walls of the Ambassador East Hotel and its classic restaurant Pump Room, imbuing a shock of new life into the historic structure. With value and simplicity as the stated ethos, Public …

Papaya Playa Project

A hotel pops up in Tulum

Touching down in the peninsular town of Tulum in southern Mexico, a collaboration of creative European service-industry innovators have launched Papaya Playa Project, a temporary hotel concept born from the pop-up retail model. The collection of 99 beach cabanas maintains a certain level of comfort while retaining the look and feel of primitive, eco-friendly lodgings in a community setting. More of a camp than a …

The Roof at the Bottom of the World

A history of exploration in the world's most enigmatic range

One of the last remaining mysteries of the terrestrial world, the Transantarctic Mountains that abut the South Pole elicit the kind of exploratory giddiness typically reserved for 16th century seafarers. Scientist-explorer Edmund Stump has charted the courses of previous polar expeditions through this magnificent range, bringing to bear the trials of exploration from Clark Ross’ initial 1840 voyage to scientific missions of the late 20th …