Australian hotelier Louis Li describes how avant-garde Berlin inspired game-changing Jackalope

It was Berlin — specifically the city’s avant-garde creative scenes — that hotelier Louis Li used to channel the creation of his luxury Australian property, Jackalope.

In fact it was a visit to the Berlin Film Festival in the mid 2000s that led the Chinese national, who had moved to Melbourne to study filmmaking at RMIT, to swap celluloid dreams for those of luxury hotelier. Albeit one driven by art and design. Li’s Jackalope changed the game on opening 10 years ago — a bold beacon that’s rightly secured strong international attention.

Brought to life by Li and leading Australian architecture and interior firm Carr, labelling it, simply, a “hotel” runs as a disservice.

This is a landmark Australian property, a dark accented world of brutalist expressionism, fantastical art and luxury furniture that’s a juxtaposition to anything else resting in the lush surrounds of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. And wider Australia for that matter.

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Here, Li recalls the force that is Berlin.

“Berlin is one of the coolest cities in the world I have ever visited. It is an amazing destination for art, fashion and is the capital of techno music too.

I try to attend Berlin Art Week each year; it’s the most amazing artistic programs I have experienced. It’s where I go to see all of my favourite artists like Olafur Eliasson, Alicja Kwade and Wolfgang Tillmans. I also collect all of their works and have met them all in this city where they live and work.

Many of the world’s most iconic conceptual artists all live in Berlin. I like to collect conceptual art because I love art that provokes ideas; I bring a lot of it back to Australia.

As a creator myself, conceptualisation is very important to me. I love how these Berlin-based conceptual artists challenge you to think in different ways. As a collective, they are the most avant-garde group in the city who are always pushing boundaries. That really inspires me.

Coincidentally, I discovered the name Jackalope while on a trip to Berlin 15 years ago. I was inside an antique shop and saw a jackalope statue hanging on the wall. I became totally obsessed with this creature and asked the owner what sort of creature it was.

He continued to tell me the whole story of the jackalope — I thought it was fantastic; a blurring of the natural and supernatural worlds. It was a perfect symbolisation that I ended up using for my hotel on the Mornington Peninsula. The hotel is built on this idea of natural and supernatural beauty.

Berlin appeals because it’s a very clean which is another reason I fell in love. The people are super cool too, I think they’re the coolest dressed people in Europe! It’s very black. It fits in with my obsession of avant-garde fashion labels.

The first time I went to Berlin was to attend the film festival when I was a university student in 2015. I became instantly obsessed with the city ever since and go regularly.

Berlin is a city of contrasts. German culture is a very structured, a bit serious, but you also have this juxtaposition of a very free, underground, edgy and grungy side as well.

One of my favourite stores in Berlin is Darkland. It’s full of gothic labels I buy every time I visit.

Designers like Boris Bidjan Saberi who was born in Munich and Carol Christian Poell from Austria, are part of a group of early pioneer designers of avant-garde sculptural fashion. It’s become more mainstream over time because of them.

Berlin is known as the birthplace of the dark aesthetic; and it’s had a huge impact on me.

You’ll see the 6m sculpture of an abstracted jack rabbit and antelope created by Emily Floyd at Jackalope. Inside my bar, Flaggerdoot, the nod to Berlin continues with artwork inspired by alchemy and avant-garde artworks.

Even my passion for cinema is reflected in what I have brought to Jackalope and a partnership with Lexus Australia to present an open-air cinema on the pool deck for a short season; it’s got elements of luxury, a moodiness and gothic feel to it as well.

In 2024, I attended Peggy Gou’s debut album I Hear You launch in Berlin. She’s a South Korean DJ and singer/songwriter who lives there now.

She’s a major influence in music and fashion and we both collect Icelandic/Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s work. He also lives in Berlin and splits his time between his homeland and Germany.

I attended a talk given by Eliasson in May last year, discussing the artwork he made for Gou’s album. These moments fill me with inspiration — I love to hear how art happens.

And Berlin brings a lot of creative people together, a 24-hour non-stop itinerary if really want that. I love how there are nightclubs that are very specific about what you wear — it has to be black in a lot of cases.”

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