Loft Harderwijk is four places to stay on the old harbour front at Harderwijk - two apartments and two studios, built onto the boathouses that line the water.
Guests book them from a screen, months ahead, having never stood in the room. So everything they judge it on is made rather than experienced: a mark, a set of photographs, a way the place presents itself. I built that side of it - the logo, the identity, the styling and the shoot.
An interior photograph either sells a room or empties it. Shot plainly, a well-finished loft looks like an agent’s listing: accurate, and no reason to book.
And what this place has isn’t really the furniture. It’s the water. The lofts sit on it, the glass runs floor to ceiling, and the light coming off it moves all day. A picture that leaves that out is a picture of a sofa.
The logo came off the buildings. The boathouses along that stretch stand in a row of pitched gables, and drawn as a single line they make a mark that’s the place itself rather than a decoration applied to it.
The shoot was styled rather than documented - the table laid, the lamps lit, the doors open onto the harbour. Warm against the cold coming off the water: rust velvet, amber glass, olive and brass, and the marina left in the frame in almost every room.
The identity runs across the site and the booking platforms, so the place looks like itself wherever it’s found.
The lofts score very highly on Booking.com and the other sites they list on - which, for somewhere chosen from a screen, is the part that counts.
