It began with what Regis de Salles, creative director at the English firm DeSallesFlint, bluntly terms “a design nightmare”: 14 structural columns, each measuring nearly 5 feet across, running the length of a not-so-spacious ground floor of an eight-story new-build by JEMS Architekci. The project in question was a hotel in central Warsaw for the rapidly expanding Polish brand Puro, its art-packed portfolio of properties catering to a young, cosmopolitan crowd.