Zaha Hadid Architects has released new images and an animation of the firm’s “Stacked Vase” tower in Melbourne’s Central Business District to coincide with the building receiving approval from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, the City of Melbourne and the Office of Victorian Government Architect. The 54-story (178m) mixed-use skyscraper will be Zaha Hadid’s only tower in Melbourne, and upon completion will become an new emblem of “the most livable city in the world.”

© Zaha Hadid Architects

Partnering with local firm Plus Architecture, the tower will contain 70,000 square meters (750,000 square feet) of office, retail, residential and public space, including 420 apartments. The tower’s stacked-vase form takes inspiration from its mixed-use program, and will be supported by an “elegant colonnade of sculptural, curved columns” that “embody and emulate the finest examples of historic architecture” in the area.

© Zaha Hadid Architects

To provide easy access to all, the tower will connect into the city’s transportation system via a pedestrian link to the Southern Cross railway station and the tram network, while a new plaza and public terraces will invite in residents and visitors alike. The building will also provide 350 bicycle parking spaces as well as bays for electric vehicles and shared car programs.

Thanks to a finned façade system that reduces direct solar gain, 600 Collins Street is projected to use 50 percent less energy than a conventional mixed-use tower. A high performance glazing system, high efficiency central cooling, high efficiency lighting and greywater reuse systems will also contribute to the reduced energy and resource consumption.

© Zaha Hadid Architects

“This is an inspired project that will enrich the city, creating a new public plaza and amenities as well as improve connectivity for all pedestrians,” said a spokeswoman for Landream, the project’s developers. “We are proud to be delivering Zaha Hadid’s design for Melbourne and will continue to work closely with her team to make it a reality.”

© Zaha Hadid Architects

© Zaha Hadid Architects

© Zaha Hadid Architects

© Zaha Hadid Architects

© Zaha Hadid Architects

• Architects: Zaha Hadid Architects
• Location: 600 Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3004, Australia
• Architecture: Zaha Hadid Architects
• Design: Zaha Hadid & Patrik Schumacher
• Zha Director: Gianluca Racana
• Zha Project Director: Michele Pasca di Magliano
• Zha Project Architect: Juan Camilo Mogollon
• Zha Project Team: Johannes Elias, Hee Seung Lee, Cristina Capanna, Sam Mcheileh, Luca Ruggeri, Nhan Vo, Michael Rogers, Gaganjit Singh, Julia Hyoun Hee Na, Massimo Napoleoni, Ashwanth Govindaraji, Maria Tsironi, Kostantinos Psomas, Marius Cernica, Veronica Erspamer, Cyril Manyara, Megan Burke, Ahmed Hassan, Effie Kuan
• Local Architect: PLUS Architecture
• Structural Engineering: Robert Bird Group
• Building Services Engineering And Sustainability: ADP Consulting
• Planning Consultant: URBIS
• Quantity Surveyor: WT Parternship
• Facade Consultant: AURECON
• Landscape Designer: OCULUS
• Wind Engineering: MEL Consultants
• Traffic Engineer: RATIO
• Building Surveyor: PLP
• Fire Engineer: OMNII
• Waste Management: Leigh Design
• Pedestrian Modelling: ARUP
• Acoustics: Acoustic Logic
• Land Surveyor: Bosco Jonson
• Visualizations: VA
• Area: 70000.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Zaha Hadid Architects

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© Tomas Kjaervik

• Mas Uno Studio: Mas Uno Studio
• Location: San Martín 160, Distrito de Lima 15067, Perú
• Project Architects: Peter Seinfeld
, María Paz Ballén
• Collaborator: Carlos Navarro
• Project Area: 600.0 m2
• Project Year: 2015
• Photographs: Tomas Kjaervik

• Structural Engineer: Iván Zapata Rojas
• Construction: Ernesto Mosqueira

© Tomas Kjaervik

From the architect. We start from the understanding that a building of monumental value has several layers of history, the result of multiple renovations over the years and that our intervention is another layer in that density.

Section 2

Apesteguia House was originally a single floor ranch made of adobe to which was added a second floor of quincha as a playground, which was then transformed into a two-family dwelling. In 1986 the architect Juvenal Baracco transformed the house into 8 duplex apartments with mezzanines. The apartments were organized as a gear around a vertical circulation axis located in the central bay, consolidating a triple height that connects all levels of the house.

© Tomas Kjaervik

The project was then converted into a hotel that was semi abandoned until it was purchased by the advertising agency DDB Fahrenheit for their offices. While the house was well kept and had been remodelled with an intelligent and important project at the time, the new use forced us to think it in a totally different way. The biggest challenge was to understand that the subdivision of the house in 8 apartments made it impossible for the smooth functioning of the dynamics of work and that it was necessary to reorganize the space into a single unit. The mezzanines and wooden stairs were removed revealing the original height of the spaces and the thatch walls were unclad, preserving the wood studs to achieve a more fluid spatiality on the second level.

© Tomas Kjaervik

We decided to reuse the vertical axis created by Juvenal Baracco as a void that organizes the space and proposed a metal structure staircase that connects the first and second floors. In the remodeling of 1986 all private circulations of the apartments were separated as autonomous volumes in a triple height void. It was a Piranesian space understood from the rest, the interstice, what remains between the separated objects. We considered that with the change of use and the need for a single spatial structure, this triple height void could be considered no longer as 8 introverted circulations, but as 1 single gesture / extroverted circulation. A grandstand literally occupies the void and makes it habitable.

General Scheme

For White Night 2013 and in collaboration with the artist Nani Cardenas, we worked on an installation in the house entitled Irrigation Systems. The piece, between irony and denunciation, refers to the situation of historic monuments and real estate pressure.

© Tomas Kjaervik

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Renaissance New York Midtown Hotel digital wall. Image Courtesy of Renaissance

This article was originally published on Autodesk’s Line//Shape//Space publication as “Service With a Smile: Why Hotels of the Future Are High-Touch, Not High-Tech.”

Although it opened in 2011, YOTEL New York feels like it belongs in 2084, the same year the science-fiction film Total Recall is set. Quintessentially futuristic, the original cult classic starring Arnold Schwarzenegger features robotic police officers, instant manicures, hovering cars, implanted memories, and skin-embedded cellphones. Its protagonist, Douglas Quaid, is a construction worker obsessed with vacationing on Mars.

One could easily imagine Quaid staying at a Martian outpost of YOTEL, a “minimal-service” hotel modeled after Japanese capsule hotels, which provide a large number of extremely small modular guest rooms for travelers willing to forgo all the services of a conventional hotel in exchange for convenient, affordable accommodations. These kinds of automated-service hotels may be a trend into the 2020s, but are they really hotels of the future?

Located in Hell’s Kitchen near Times Square, YOTEL’s flagship property has 669 “cabins” spread across 60 floors, each cabin with a futon-style bed occupying most of its scant square footage. It has an ultracontemporary all-white design that glows radioactively with neon-purple mood lighting; automated check-in via self-service kiosks; and YOBOT, a robotic baggage handler that stores and retrieves guests’ luggage.

AC Hotel Chicago Downtown kitchen. Image © The Gettys Group

When most people stay at YOTEL, they believe they’re witnessing one of the hotels of the future. But when Ron Swidler, principal of branding at Chicago-based hospitality design firm The Gettys Group, stayed there, he saw something else entirely. To start with, no one was actually using the YOBOT; although it looked cool, it felt more like a gimmick than a service. That was also the case with automated check-in, which failed when his kiosk encountered a software error. And in the two days Swidler stayed at the hotel, he never came in contact with a person working there.

“Here I was in an environment that was meant to be representative of a leading-edge hotel experience, but it was missing an important component: hospitality,” Swidler says. “The future of technology and the role it plays in hospitality should allow for personalization and customization that combines computing power. What we need to consider is how can we use technology to enhance the guest experience while still allowing for a human connection.”

The ”pillow” lights in the Marriott Manila grand ballroom. Image © The Gettys Group

In 2015, The Gettys Group designed the AC Hotel Chicago Downtown, which features wireless service buttons called “Kallpods” that guests can use to easily summon a staff member when they need service; the grand ballroom at the Marriott Manila, with its 176 programmable “pillow” lights in the ceiling that can change to any of 360 different colors to match the moods of meetings and events; and The Godfrey Hotel Boston, where guests can use their personal mobile devices to stream photos, videos, and music directly to their rooms’ 55-inch televisions. (All three hotels were designed using Autodesk AutoCAD Architecture.)

“I’m a big believer that technology should be used to aid the hospitality service experience, not replace the hospitality service experience,” says Swidler, a self-described “early adopter and technophile.”

He’s not alone. Although novelty lodgings like YOTEL will continue to open on the premise that technology is an end, not a means—Japan, for example, recently opened the Henn-na hotel, the world’s first hotel staffed entirely by robots—many hotel designers are laser-focused on integrating technology and hospitality in ways that amplify service instead of merely automating it.

A room at The Godfrey Hotel Boston. Image © The Gettys Group

“If you spend a lot of time reading TripAdvisor reviews like I do, you know that aesthetics rarely get mentioned as a driver for someone’s stay,” Swidler says. “Instead, comments primarily focus on service. So if you look at guest expectations of design, it’s design of an overall experience, and a hotel’s differentiation is the delivery of that experience.”

One property whose design perfectly embodies this ethos is the Renaissance New York Midtown Hotel, which opened in March as New York’s first interactive “living” hotel. Designed by Jeffrey Beers International in collaboration with digital design firm Réalisations Inc. Montréal, it leverages innovative technology to enhance the guest experience in support of the Renaissance brand’s mission: “Helping the next generation of business travelers discover unexpected cultural experiences.”

Highlights include a four-story LED board atop the building that displays a digital clock over the surrounding Garment District; an elevator bank showcasing digital imagery timed to change with the opening and closing of the elevator doors; and a “digital tapestry” that leverages reflective wallpaper, motion detectors, projectors, and 3D cameras to capture and project data and movement occurring in the surrounding corridor. A dynamic patchwork of digital artwork that spans the length of an entire city block between the hotel’s main and satellite entrances, the tapestry morphs in response to human movement and touch.

Renaissance New York Midtown Hotel digital clock. Image Courtesy of Renaissance

The tapestry’s centerpiece is the Discovery Portal, a digital alcove with hologram projections on the floor and a large screen on the wall. When guests stand on various holograms, they activate content on the screen that helps them explore the area around them: Standing on one hologram, for instance, will unfurl a menu of attractions located within a 10-minute walk of the hotel; standing on another will reveal nearby attractions that are open at night. For more information, guests need only raise their arm and point at the desired content on the screen.

“Every time they come to our hotel, we want guests to experience something they haven’t experienced before,” explains Renaissance New York Midtown General Manager David DiFalco. “Technology is a catalyst for that.”

The Discovery Portal doesn’t replace traditional human concierges; rather, it supplements them, as guests who desire personalized recommendations and a human touch can visit the sixth-floor lobby to consult the hotel’s “Navigators”—in-the-know neighborhood experts trained to make recommendations for restaurants, bars, and attractions that only locals would know.

Renaissance New York Midtown Hotel Discovery Portal. Image Courtesy of Renaissance

“On the one hand, you’ve got the technology that makes you feel like you’re in an advanced, brand-new property with a lot of great features in it,” DiFalco says. “But at the same time, there’s not so much technology that it prevents you from interacting with staff. Because our people are always the most important asset we possess inside our hotel. It doesn’t matter how cool your technology is or how nice your design is; if you don’t have good people taking care of your guests, they’re not going to come back.”

Whether talking about Discovery Portals, YOBOTs, or any number of emergent hospitality technologies—such as beacons, keyless room entry, or in-room virtual reality—the negotiation between high-tech and high-touch service is constant.

“While a lot of technology has great PR value, we don’t know yet whether there will be guest satisfaction that comes as a result of its integration,” Swidler concludes. “So anything more than the most conservative solutions takes a leap of faith.”

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© Kevin Scott

• Architects: goCstudio
• Location: Seattle, WA, United States
• Project Team: Jon Gentry AIA, Aimée O’Carroll ARB
• Engineer: Kevin Winner, Swenson Say Faget
• Area: 240.0 ft2
• Photographs: Kevin Scott

© Kevin Scott

The idea for the floating sauna was born on a cold and wet winter’s. Combining our love of the water, the relaxing dry heat of saunas, and floating structures, the project began to take shape. We focused on primal concepts of fire, water, and community. We were searching for a way to engage the water surrounding our city, enticing visitors onto the lakes year round. We called this project ‘wa_sauna’ and felt it would be a welcome addition to the Pacific Northwest landscape and its adventurous people. 

Diagram

wa_sauna engages the ideas of journey and discovery; creating a unique experience and refuge on the water that offers a different perspective on the landscape. Boaters and kayakers can venture out and tie off to the surrounding deck, allowing for the sauna tradition to take place on Seattle’s lakes.

© Kevin Scott

The project was funded through the support of the local community and a crowdfunding campaign. In the same spirit of crowdfunding wa_sauna, the project was built by our studio and a team of talented volunteers, all with close connections to the architecture community and unique construction skills. We were generously donated a large space in the production warehouse of Hilliard’s Beer for the fabrication of wa_sauna.

Details

Maneuvering a 14’ high, 4,500lb structure from the warehouse to the public boat ramp and into the water was a challenging process. Towed on 6 steel casters with a 1980 VW Vanagon, we slowly crept along at dawn making the 8 block trip to the boat ramp in just under 3 hours. The contrast of steel casters on rough gravel and pavement to the feeling of this structure gently floating was the most exciting moment of the build process.

© Kevin Scott

wa_sauna can now be seen regularly on Lake Union and Lake Washington. The sauna is a registered vessel, powered by an electric trolling motor with (3) 12-volt batteries and heated by a wood burning stove. Quietly exploring the lakes, wa_sauna allows users to find peace and quiet in the warmth of the sauna, with endless unique views of Seattle and sounds of the fire crackling and the gentle water around them.

© Kevin Scott

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