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Architects: Goettsch Partners
- Year: 2012
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Photographs:1st Image
Located adjacent to the Shenzhen Bay Sports Center athletic complex, the new Hotel Kapok, designed by Goettsch Partners (GP), is a 19-story boutique hotel with 242 rooms. The design attempts to provide the guest with a unique spatial quality that eliminates the cloistered and disorienting nature of typical hotel corridors. In response, a pinwheel plan was developed, allowing for corridors that end in vision glass with a punctuation of light and views. Additionally, four three-story atriums rhythmically ascend up and around the hotel core to drive light deeper into the floor plans while strategically organizing amenity areas vertically throughout the building. Each atrium is located to celebrate views that are best by direction and height: south and low, to the adjacent pedestrian plaza; east and high, to distant Hong Kong Bay; and north and west in the middle, for views of the surrounding athletic venues.
The hotel’s exterior expression is unique, clad entirely in high-performance glazing that is overlaid with a perforated metal scrim that provides shading and references the similar diamond-shaped pattern on the enclosure of the adjacent sports center. The four atrium facades are highly transparent, all-glass structures that reveal themselves on the outside as large voids in the scrim. A rooftop garden and restaurant offer expansive views of the city, bay and Hong Kong beyond, while the recessed entry court provides an intimate setting distinctly scaled for privacy from the neighboring sports arena.
