Hotel Review - Hi Matic in Paris - NYTimes.com A budget boutique hotel full of trippy touches, with double rooms starting at around 100 euros, about $123 at $1.23 to the euro (breakfast included). After making a splash in 2003 with her goofy and futuristic interiors for the Hi Hotel in Nice, Matali Crasset, a Philippe Starck protégée, was approached by the Hi Life group to design its third outpost, in Paris. The resulting 42-room grown-up playpen opened last year in the 11th Arrondissement. Though it is far from the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and other postcard attractions, the Hi Matic is steps from many hip new hangouts. The hotel is on the Rue de Charonne, a corridor brimming with some of Paris's coolest new haunts. A mere five-minute stroll from the hotel are two innovative restaurants (Rino and Septime), boutiques from top French indie fashion labels (Kulte and Sessun) and a host of small bars, art galleries and furniture stores. You'd better like color. The rooms are done in the bright solid hues of a child's playroom - sky-blue walls, green floor, purple bed, orange shelves - and their diminutive size and packed, low furniture seem appropriate for tykes, too. Half of my unit, No. 42, was taken up by the bed, which was really more of a pile of futon-like (but comfy and cozy) mattresses on the floor. The only other furnishings were a tiny desk, a low gumdrop-like cube serving as a chair, and a wooden bar that held comically oversize clothes hangers. But the room's design revealed its creator's obsession with efficiency and technology. It strategically incorporated a TV, iPod station, digital safe, hair dryer and movable reading lamp. Imagine a collaboration between Muji and Lego. A bit of a misnomer, since there was no bath and almost no room. Rather, one side of the bedroom contained a cylindrical glass shower chamber and a toilet sheltered by a tiny, boxy wooden cabin with translucent green and blue windows. Toiletries were limited to a container of Ren brand "Neroli and grapefruit zest body wash." The lobby is also decorated with kaleidoscopic colors - fuchsia floor, sky blue walls, orange beams, lighted panels - and outfitted with little cabinlike enclosures containing sofas. Two touch-screen computers allow guests to check in and out, while a wall-size vending machine sells everything from experimental music CDs (15 euros) to architecture books (25 euros) to olive tapenades from the South of France (27 euros). The soundtrack of peppy electronic music, full of bloops and blorps, adds to the slightly futuristic feel. None. Instead the hotel has an automated basement breakfast room and cafeteria. Filled with simple low tables and tiny stools recalling a kindergarten, the space houses a pair of vending machines. One gives free espresso, cappuccino, macchiato and other coffee drinks until 6 p.m. The other serves round-the-clock organic orange juice (3 euros), yogurt (2 euros), fruit crumbles (3.50 euros) and other organic goodies. Anyone requiring pampering, personal service or first-class amenities should probably skip the Hi Matic. But if you're after an original, kooky and cool crash pad off the main tourist track, this is a fine choice that is easy on the wallet (for Paris, at least). Hi Matic, 71, rue de Charonne; (33-1) 43-67-56-56; hi-matic.net.