Hospitality has always been a benign arms race, a struggle to capture the hearts, minds and loyalty of the most fickle and demanding guest. Hotels were the original testbeds for architectural innovation and building technology, places where many people had their first experience of modern plumbing, electric light, the elevator and a host of other inventions that we now take for granted.
For example, in 1883, the City Hotel in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, was the very first building to have electric illuminations, courtesy of Thomas Edison's original system, while the Savoy in London, which opened in 1889, was the first British hotel to have both electric lights and lifts.
These days, as frequent travellers know to their cost, a surfeit of technology doesn't always make for a relaxing stay. Over their lifetime, regular hotel guests will probably spend two or three days figuring how to turn off the lights in their room. All too often, flat-screen TVs, phone docks and speaker systems will sit there, ignored and unused.
Yet hoteliers still require drama and spectacle to lure the crowds and secure status and publicity, and even the most discrete modern hotels relish the chance to showcase standout design. The current crop of high-tech hotels combines the initial wow-factor with coherence and consistency, preferring design and technology to be integral to the whole experience and not some last-minute afterthought. The following selection of spaces to stay have been shaped by innovation, not novelty.
Waldhotel
Switzerland's centuries-old reputation as a place of rest and recuperation continues into the modern age, with hotels and spas promoting the virtue of clear Alpine air, rejuvenating views and all-round peace and quiet.
The Waldhotel in Obbürgen is part of the Bürgenstock resort, a cluster of high-end hotels and residences that has overseen hospitality in the Lake Lucerne region since the mid-19th century. The newest addition to the group, the Waldhotel, takes wellness to another level with a discrete but well-defined focus on not just rest and recuperation, but actual medical procedures, including dentistry, physical therapy, weight loss and eye surgery, alongside alternative medicine and the usual quota of pools, spa and wellness facilities.
In total, the 160 rooms and suites are served by more than 4,000m2 of remedial facilities, with architecture by acclaimed Swiss designer Matteo Thun making the most of outdoor space with a cascade of shaded terraces and green roofs, all contained within a unifying wooden façade. Slipping away for a discreet procedure can now be undertaken in style.
Morpheus Hotel
High-rises rarely strut their structural stuff as brazenly as Macau's new Morpheus Hotel. One of the first Zaha Hadid Architects' project to be completed after the 2016 death of its principal, the Morpheus is a colossal piece of mathematically driven weaving, its white structural lattice binding together the 42-storey tower within.
Hadid's team took the solid tower model and deformed it with three "punched" holes, then allowed the lattice to flow, curve and twist as it found the most efficient way around the redefined form. This is a showcase example of the studio's parametric design approach, in which every facet of a building's structure, façade, services and internal spaces are digitally bound together, allowing changes to any one parameter to filter automatically through the entire design.
ZHA's asymmetric-form language continues in the rooms and at the open-air pool on the 40th floor. The fishnet-style lattice gives a contemporary sheen of bling to a structure that sits among some decidedly more prosaic buildings in Macau's City of Dreams casino resort, a prime destination in the region. Here, 32 million annual visitors ensure casino revenues exceed even those of Las Vegas.
Nobu Hotel
Ben Adams Architects design for Nobuyuki “Nobu” Matsuhisa's new restaurant and hotel outpost in Shoreditch creates a striking infill structure for this happily chaotic part of London, a district that's not short of destination spaces or design innovation.
The slim new hotel, just off Great Eastern Street, was originally devised by Ron Arad Architects. It was Arad who came up with the fractured east façade, with its oversailing steel beams and tumbling series of balconies, although it was Adams and his team who executed the design.
In the process, they refined the detail and made space for 150 bedrooms above a small external garden and the triple-height basement restaurant that gives the hotel its name. Concrete, steel, bronze, timber and glass combine to make a dark, layered interior, with daylight coming from the sunken courtyard. Even the smallest rooms have Apple TV, going all the way up to the palatial Nobu suite, which has twin balconies perched on the "frayed" edge of the building.
Freycinet Lodge
On the edge of an island on the edge of the world, intrepid travellers will find these glass and timber pavilions, designed by Hobart-based Liminal Studio. An extension to the existing Freycinet Lodge, a long-standing nature-lover's destination overlooking Great Oyster Bay, each of the Coastal Pavilions consist of a living and sleeping space, divided into pods that encircle an open-air bath on the deck.
The whole set-up is geared around the great outdoors, with extensive use of timber inside and out, including charred hardwood façades that blend the structures into the surrounding bush. The protected landscape of the Freycinet National Park demands the highest environmental standards, and Liminal's pods are designed to touch the ground lightly, replacing an existing (and underused) tennis court with places that get you even closer to nature.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
