One of the biggest complaints of caffeine-charged traveling businesspeople is that no matter how hard they try to avoid it, their daily lives eventually turn into a boring and tedious routine: wake up at 5:30 am, take a cab to the airport, a Starbucks coffee while waiting at the gate, a tasteless omelet in the plane, a cab to the same forgettable hotel, meeting at 9am, business lunch, afternoon meetings, drinks, back to the hotel, sleep, wake up at 5:30am, catch the flight back and so on. Their lives seem filled with sameness.
This motivated us to create a hotel where every recurring visit would be a completely different experience in an attempt to break their drudging routine. Every suite would have a different floor plan and spatial arrangement. The different shapes were then assembled like a giant Tetris to form a vertical tower. The tower culminates with the last shape left in a cantilever to generate suspense and the assembled shapes were then raised to provide an entrance to the building. To further accentuate the specific character of the suites, each shape was conceived of a different material: wood, metal, volcanic stone, marble, ceramic, limestone, glass.
He encouraged us by letting us know his decision was bitter-sweet. The bitter part was loosing the original concept and the sweet part was that we could maintain the façade because he really liked it.
We had to find a way to adapt the floor plans and reorganize the interiors without sacrificing the façade. In the end, the client got his hotel and we kept our façade.
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