Táo Mèo Restaurant & Lady Bird Hotel

The town grew out of a hill station built under French rule in the early twentieth century, when officials came up from the lowlands to escape the summer heat. Villas with steep roofs, chimneys and stone bases still set the tone of its centre, and many later buildings borrowed their language. This corner building, facing the main square with the mountains behind, belongs to that lineage.

The design team renovated it as a restaurant on the lower floors, with hotel rooms and apartments above. Rather than replace the neoclassical shell, they kept its composition: a slender corner tower, arched openings, cornices and a facade washed in warm yellow. The building takes on new uses while keeping its place in the streetscape, and adds to the town’s character instead of competing with it.

Most of the effort went into details and furnishing. Ochre walls, deep blue doors and joinery, touches of red and timber furniture carry the palette of the facade into every room. Arched windows frame the square and the peaks, and in the dining rooms long bands of glass turn the mountain weather into a backdrop for meals.

The hotel rooms are quieter, with pale walls, wooden floors and tall windows opening onto balconies. Small things, such as the painted ceiling inside the tower, a bird motif cut into a window or a lamp beside each table, give the sense of a house that has been looked after over time rather than fitted out in one go.

The renovation shows how a building of this kind can meet the demands of today’s visitors while honouring the architecture that gave the town its identity.