French designer Philippe Starck has released images of a new nine-story hotel called the Maison Heler in the picturesque eastern city of Metz, France. Photo: Julius HirtzbergerA uniquely inspired design—Starck’s team said it was named after the  title character in his new novella La vie minutieuse de Manfred Heler—the hotel expands vertically from a monumental base into a looming, metal-cladded manse whose identifiable characteristics derive from different 19th-century endemic styles.  Photo: Julius HirtzbergerThe program includes an elegant brasserie/cocktail bar, event spaces, and 104 total hotel rooms. Starck says the vertical arrangement is the product of an imagined geological event that befell the main character. Photo: Julius HirtzbergerEschewing decoration on the singular tower in contrast to the mansion top, the designer chose to repeat his 'Spartan' mindset inside the hotel base, where suites are "stripped of any superficiality, where each material asserts its own colour" ...