Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Axel Vervoordt is rearranging furniture inside a sunlit penthouse as his friend, hotelier Innegrit Volkhardt, watches on. The space distils Vervoordt\u2019s refined sense of purity, an aesthetic drawing on the principle of wabi-sabi, the beauty of\u00a0imperfection. The walls are richly pigmented in earthy shades, accents of wood bear the marks of age and simple, comfortable furniture is swathed in linen. A mood of serenity settles as soon as the door closes.\u00a0This is not the inner sanctum of an upscale residence, however, but a 350sq m suite spanning the entire eighth floor of Munich\u2019s Bayerischer Hof Hotel. Volkhardt, the managing director and fourth-generation family owner of the hotel, has entrusted the designer, art dealer and curator with the task of\u00a0breathing modernity into the grand address, which has welcomed guests on the city\u2019s Promenadeplatz since 1841.Actors, politicians, academics and pop stars have all found a home-from-home within these walls. Michael Jackson was a regular and the Dalai Lama stayed here, as did Albert Einstein and Queen Elizabeth II. Musician Lenny Kravitz posted a photograph of himself sprawled across the penthouse sofa, book in hand. Vervoordt has also become a familiar face at the Bayerischer Hof over the past\u00a015 years, where he has overseen several phases of refurbishment. Despite \u201crarely doing hotel projects\u201d, which he \u201cseldom enjoys\u201d, he has transformed 28 rooms and junior suites in\u00a0the north and south wing, plus the garden, atelier and Palais Keller Restaurant, the astor@Cinema Lounge, the Palaishall and the other event spaces. He \u201cmade an exception for Innegrit\u201d, whom he met through mutual friends (he also worked with the actor Robert De Niro on\u00a0the\u00a0penthouse of The Greenwich, his TriBeCa Hotel). \u00a0The new rooms, junior suites and penthouse here were\u00a0completed in January (joining a sprawling offering of 337 rooms, including 74 suites, 40 meeting rooms, five\u00a0restaurants, a breakfast room and spa, in addition to six bars and a nightclub, plus various shops). Eager to oversee the final touches to his new spaces, the spritely 77-year-old leads a tour around them. \u201cAh, the flooring here is so beautiful,\u201d he says as we enter another zen-like apartment-suite. \u201cIt\u2019s 18th-century oak, from France, a very rare find. I\u00a0told Innegrit she had to have it.\u201d The hotelier taps her heel\u00a0on the floor in response. \u201cAnd I said to Axel, there may\u00a0be a small problem,\u201d she jokes, drawing attention to the deeply grained and pitted wood, which is striking but far from\u00a0mark-proof. \u201cThe patina is wonderful,\u201d Vervoordt retorts. \u201cAnd it will only get better with age.\u201d\u00a0I find many hotels, and I won\u2019t say the names, to\u00a0be vulgar\u201cIt\u2019s wonderful working with Axel,\u201d says Volkhardt. \u201cWhen we first started this collaboration, I had the chance to see him work at his studio in Belgium, and he took me to\u00a0see the place where they keep all the wood. He knows every single piece in there.\u201d Vervoordt\u2019s eyes light up: \u201cI\u00a0call\u00a0it my plank museum,\u201d he says. \u201cTake that coffee table in the corner. The top is 18th-century walnut, from my museum. I\u00a0loved the round corners so much that we\u00a0left\u00a0them as they are. We try to respect the material. And\u00a0the antique buffet over there [he points to a rustic butcher\u2019s block] \u2013 it\u2019s very old but there\u2019s a minimalism to the piece, and it\u2019s useful. Nothing here is decorative.\u201dVervoordt\u2019s passion for antiques stems from his childhood. He recalls visits to England to stay with family during the school holidays where he began buying and selling pieces at the age of just 14. \u201cTo this\u00a0day, I\u00a0love the English style,\u201d he says. \u201cThe grand houses, where you\u2019ll find a great console table with a Gainsborough painting and\u00a0a pair of wellington boots on\u00a0the floor. It\u2019s all very casual: you have it, you live with\u00a0it,\u00a0and it never looks ostentatious.\u201d\u00a0Vervoordt was later conscripted into the Belgian army,\u00a0where he sharpened his entrepreneurial skills. \u201cI told them\u00a0I would not kill anyone, so they put me in the pharmacy \u2013 and\u00a0there I set up an aperitif bar,\u201d\u00a0he laughs at the memory. \u201cWhen friends came to my bar, I \u00a0would ask if their families had pieces in the attic they wanted to sell. I did very well.\u201dHis artistic career was similarly built on a shrewd understanding of the market. \u201cI bought and sold my first Magritte painting at just 21. I knew then I wanted to be an art dealer,\u201d Vervoordt says. He is both a bon vivant and a clever businessman who over the past 25 years has built an empire from Kanaal, an old Belgian distillery transformed into a headquarters and art hub, where his business interests span an interior design practice, an antiquaire, a private foundation and art galleries in Antwerp and Hong Kong.\u00a0Volkhardt was considered young when at 26 she took the reins of the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in 1992; her father died aged 75 in 2001 after a long illness. The hotel, which was originally conceived by industrialist Joseph Anton von Maffei at the express wish of King Ludwig I, was\u00a0purchased by her great grandfather Herrmann in 1897. \u201cIt was not always easy. The family went through lots of difficult\u00a0 political periods, and the\u00a0hotel was all but destroyed during\u00a0the second world war. My\u00a0father returned from the war and rebuilt it with his father. It took many years, all the plans were destroyed and they could only build in stages when they had money.\u201d The Bayerischer Hof\u00a0gradually expanded to encompass a number of listed buildings (including Palais Montgelas) flanking the original site. But Volkhardt\u2019s earliest memories here are not of gilded carriages and chandeliers but of cr\u00e8me caramel and Br\u00f6tchen rolls. \u201cI\u00a0remember only fragments: walking in the garden and getting very excited about coming for lunch because I\u00a0loved\u00a0the rolls,\u201d she says. \u201cBack then, all I cared about was\u00a0horses. I remember turning up for one important event\u00a0in my jodhpurs, smelling of horses.\u201dVervoordt, who shares Volkhardt\u2019s equestrian passion, takes great delight in her story. For many years he began his mornings riding Raio, a Portuguese Lusitano, around the grounds of his castle in \u2019s-Gravenwezel, near Antwerp, where he lives with his wife May. \u201cI only stopped recently,\u201d he says. \u201cSadly my horse died. I bought another but couldn\u2019t get on with him. He bumped me off. I said that\u2019s it,\u00a0no more horseriding for me.\u201dVolkhardt starts her day in a similar fashion at the family estate in Starnberg. She takes care of her four donkeys before arriving at work at 9.30am prompt. \u201cLuxury is having time to myself, which is so rare for me,\u201d she says, noting that her grandfather Hermann advised her never to live at the hotel. She has, however, continued what he started at the address, not\u00a0by clinging to nostalgia but through a gradual reinvention. Hers is a constant balancing act between traditional and modern, but in doing so, the Bayerischer Hof caters to\u00a0diverse tastes,\u00a0whether its guests check in for\u00a0swags and\u00a0tails or\u00a0Vervoordt\u2019s understated elegance.\u00a0\u201cAxel\u2019s rooms have been extremely successful. He has fans\u00a0all around the world,\u201d Volkhardt says. She admits, however, that it took some visitors\u00a0time to get accustomed to\u00a0the concept. \u201cFor the first rooms\u00a0Axel designed, we\u00a0produced \u2018how to live here\u2019 leaflets. Some people didn\u2019t understand the thought and intention behind the suites \u2013 their definition of luxury was\u00a0gold accents and\u00a0branded names. But Axel has taught me to understand the importance of natural things,\u201d she continues. \u201cThat an\u00a0old\u00a0table is prestigious. It is such a quiet expression. So\u00a0for\u00a0those who don\u2019t understand, we try\u00a0to show them\u00a0the\u00a0beauty of quietness.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t like anything fake,\u201d Vervoordt responds. \u201cEverything I do has to be real. I like natural materials because they are timeless, and the things you can move around: the furniture and the art \u2013 they bring in energy. It\u2019s\u00a0a\u00a0balance of the ephemeral and the eternal.\u201d He turns to\u00a0his friend: \u201cI find many hotels, and I won\u2019t say the names, to\u00a0be vulgar. I hate plastic, and that everything feels plastic. For me luxury is to live with great materials: beautiful wood, but also wonderful silks and velvets that you find in\u00a0old palaces, because they are real. They belong there.\u201d\u00a0But what makes a hotel special? \u201cThe people,\u201d Volkhardt says without hesitation. \u201cService makes all the difference.\u201d \u201cI disagree,\u201d Vervoordt says, laughing. \u201cIt\u2019s the rooms.\u201d His friend smiles. \u201cYes, it\u2019s a mix of both, and we have plans for many more Axel rooms here.\u201d\u00a0bayerischerhof.de<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Axel Vervoordt is rearranging furniture inside a sunlit penthouse as his friend, hotelier Innegrit Volkhardt, watches on. The space distils Vervoordt\u2019s refined sense of purity, an aesthetic drawing on the principle of wabi-sabi, the beauty of\u00a0imperfection. The walls are richly pigmented in earthy shades,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":248605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-248604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248606,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248604\/revisions\/248606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}