The Radical: Asheville’s Rebel Heart in Full Color
Art, attitude, industrial bones, bohemian bravado
Where Warehouse History Turns Avant-Garde Hotel Stage
Asheville has always had a counterculture pulse — and The Radical takes that pulse and amplifies it into an electric frequency. Set inside a 1923 warehouse along the French Broad River in the River Arts District — originally a breakfast cereal factory, then a Cold War bomb shelter — this building has lived many lives. Now, reimagined by Suomi Design Works and operated by Lark Hotels, it stands as Asheville’s boldest hospitality statement: a boutique hotel as living artwork, where Southern charm, industrial grit, and Berlin Wall rebellion collide. This isn’t just adaptive reuse. This is resurrection with bite.
Where Industrial Meets Artistic, and Art is Alive
Walk into the lobby and you’re not “checking in.” You’re entering an environment. Exposed brick and concrete form the raw bones — layered with rugs, sculptural furniture, velvet seating, theatre curtains by Broadway fabricator I. Weiss, and massive murals by Asheville legend Ian Wilkinson. Original graffiti remains, street art is everywhere, and some pieces are deliberately aged to look like artifacts smuggled from other eras — including a historic Checkpoint Charlie sign. By day, the lobby feels like a creative salon — cozy corners, quiet conversations, people sketching, editing film, plotting new projects. By night, lighting shifts, volume rises, live performance slides in, DJs emerge — and the public spaces become a cultural stage.
Rooms With Bravado and a Point of View
Upstairs, guestrooms continue the layering. Dramatic canopied beds. Luxe linens. Original street-style murals behind the headboards — with artists still returning to evolve the work, meaning the hotel is literally never finished. Sculptural furniture nods to Kent family heirlooms, vintage Lucite curios add camp, brass details and stone counter surfaces reference early 1920s glam. The design lives in tension — raw concrete ceilings + high-touch finishes — a perfect metaphor for the city.
Asheville on the Roof — Skyline, River Light, After-Dark Mythmaking
Above it all: the rooftop bar. Panoramic river, wide sky, open air. Part social club, part penthouse rave, part secret lair — including a clandestine green-room-inspired bar hidden near the top: graffiti, glowing grow lights, antique chairs, the surreal joy of discovering the unexpected. Downstairs, the four F&B venues (in partnership with chef Jacob Sessoms) keep the narrative alive: Afterglow morphs from coffee bar to cocktail lounge, Golden Hour catches the literal sunset across the water, The Roof keeps the energy high and the views wide.
DNA Hotels Verdict
The Radical is Asheville — unfiltered, unapologetic, fiercely original. A hotel that is less product and more proposition. A magnet for the creatively curious. For travelers who don’t merely want to see Asheville — but to plug directly into its nerve center. Every mural tells a story. Every detail has intention. Every night feels like a dare to live a little louder.
