THE METICULOUS WORLD OF MANFRED HELER
On story, belief, and immersive space
Manfred Heler has inherited his parents’ beautiful house. As an orphan, he finds himself all alone in a mansion surrounded by a large park. Everything is going well for him, until he starts to get bored. To cope with that boredom, he tries to invent everything. An extraordinarily rigorous and inventive man, he doesn’t necessarily succeed in everything he undertakes, but it’s always done with intelligence and poetry, guided by a naïve desire to create meticulously at all costs.
One day, Manfred is in his park. It’s springtime. He’s daydreaming in his armchair. Suddenly, the earth begins to tremble. He doesn’t understand what’s happening. He looks around and realizes, to his aghast, that he’s going up into the air — along with his park, his house, and his armchair. He climbs and climbs and climbs until the shaking stops. Then there’s silence. Manfred is high above the city. His house has been extruded, as if a cookie-cutter had arrived from below, sliced the earth’s cap, and mounted it vertically.
This is the story of Manfred Heler.
It’s the story Philippe Starck wrote before designing Maison Heler, a hotel in northern France he describes as “a habitable work of art — a literary principle crystallized into matter.”
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about spaces like this. Spaces that feel slightly theatrical. Not in an over-the-top way, but in how deliberately they shape your attention.
In New York, that’s shown up for me as more time spent in listening rooms and bathhouses — places designed to pull you out of your default rhythm and into something slower, more focused. Spaces where you’re meant to notice how you’re moving, how long you’re staying, what you’re paying attention to.
Hotels are probably the most familiar version of this idea. We expect them to set the scene. Sometimes that means transporting you somewhere else entirely. Sometimes it just means amplifying where you already are. Even lobby bars function this way — a kind of narrative shorthand, borrowing from cinema and culture to set the tone for an evening.
That kind of theatricality doesn’t always work.
What’s always bothered me about a lot of immersive spaces is the quiet pressure that comes with them. The sense that you’re supposed to participate. That you’re supposed to believe. That there’s a right way to experience the thing. When everything is turned up all the way, it can start to feel like performance.
Think Hard Rock Hotels and Margaritaville. Places like that do a lot, and do it very loudly, regardless of where they are on the globe. (To be fair, these spots have a time and a place — I’ve long said Margaritaville Times Square has one of the best rooftops in the city.)
Maison Heler feels different.
It doesn’t ask much of you. You don’t need to know the story, and you don’t need to follow it. The narrative is there if you want it, quietly shaping the space around you.
From the street, Maison Heler emerges like a dreamscape. A nine-story brutalist monolith, with an aluminum-clad, nineteenth-century Lorraine-style mansion, improbably, sitting atop it as if it’s been lifted straight out of the ground. It’s a strange thing to see, but somehow doesn’t feel out of place.
Starck has called it “a game on uprooted roots.” The fortress-like houses of the region form the project’s grounding, while Manfred Heler’s fictional life gives it a kind of internal logic. The building behaves according to the story.
Inside, the narrative unfolds in pieces. Scattered throughout the hotel are what Starck calls “objects of impossible intrigue” — crystal hammers, plaster anvils, double-ended axes, inverted rocking chairs — that feel less staged than they do like they were left behind.
Books show up the same way. Near tables and seating areas, there’s a loose collection of volumes that hint at the project’s sensibility without spelling it out. One of them, Catalogue d’objets introuvables, a pseudo-scientific book from 1969 by Jacques Carelman, feels like it could have belonged to Manfred himself.
The story ascends.
On the first floor, it becomes more personal. La Cuisine de Rose is dedicated to Manfred’s imaginary lover — a small but meaningful tether back to the original story. Objects in the space sit within a muted pink palette: the dishware, the glassware, the menus. Above the pink marble bar, a wooden airplane hangs from the ceiling, folded like oversized origami. It’s all a bit theatrical.
As you move up through the building, the narrative thins. Dark carpets are embroidered with Manfred’s hieroglyphics. Outside each room, illuminated signs pulled from vintage photographs depict strange devices and improbable inventions. The guest rooms themselves are intentionally sparse — “almost spartan” — offering a kind of relief from the more expressive common spaces.
Immersion here is optional.
At the very top is the penthouse: Manfred Heler’s house itself. Guests and visitors can dine at Maison de Manfred, designed to feel like an old family home. The bar is the highlight, washed in colored light filtered through stained-glass windows designed by Starck’s daughter, Ara Starck, bathing the space in an almost stage-like light.
Maison Heler is, on its surface, about Manfred Heler. But it’s also about how spaces carry meaning. How stories, when they’re treated seriously, can shape how we move, how long we stay, how closely we look.
In a moment when so many places feel interchangeable, Maison Heler is a reminder that immersive spaces don’t have to demand belief or participation. They can simply be there, offering another world if you want it.
All good spaces tell a story. The best ones let you decide how much you want to believe it.
This is Part I of Dream Spaces, a three-part series exploring theatrical design and immersive space.
This incredibly simple and short article is somehow my favorite read of the month. Very pleased to have stumbled upon it.
Brilliant piece. The way Starck lets the narrative breathe instead of forcing it down guests' throats is exactly what most themed spaces get wrong. I stayed at a similar concepthotel in Berlin last year and it felt almost claustrophobic, but the sparse rooms here give that neccessary relief. Makes me wonder if the best immersive design is actaully about knowing when to pull back.