Seen more than any wall in the building.
Nobody photographs a lift lobby, and everybody stands in one. It is the surface a hotel’s guests see more often than any other, at close range, while waiting.
A lift lobby is a small room with a great deal of metal in it: the door surrounds, the doors themselves, the call panel, the wall the doors sit in, and very often the ceiling. All of it is at arm’s length, all of it is touched, and all of it is seen by every guest several times a day.
That closeness is what decides the finish. A brushed grain reads as quiet and forgives the hundred fingerprints a day; a mirror finish shows every one of them. Brass and bronze in a lobby are chosen for how they age under hands, because they will be handled.
The surround has to meet the lift manufacturer’s door on a tolerance that leaves no visible gap and no edge to catch — which means the drawing is done with the lift contractor, not after them. Panels are sized so that a damaged one can be replaced without disturbing its neighbours, because in a hotel something will hit them.
The same language is carried along the corridor: skirting, a dado line, the door frames to the rooms. A lobby that is finished in bronze and a corridor that is not reads as two projects.
