Hotels and Restaurants: The Latest Architecture and News

The main concept in the Dead Sea Resort & Opera House by Accent Design Group is to create a resort that naturally blends in this special site, by having the built up areas merge naturally with the surroundings, appearing as terraces in the landscape. These terraces, or strips, would contain the individual housing units, amidst a natural/artificial landscape of palm trees and water pools. The idea again is to have something that infringes as little as possible on the experience of the Dead Sea, and that would provide an antidote to the other reigning ideas of suburban recreational facilities, which create completely artificial surroundings. More images and architects’ description after the break.

JDS has just been awarded first prize for their Hangzhou Waves scheme – a competition entry that called for the design of not one, but two buildings for the financial district of Hangzhou Xintiandi of Hangzhou, China. The two sloping volumes offer different exterior expressions and hold different programmatic entities (a hotel and an office building); yet, the forms are guided by similar attitudes regarding sunlight, green roofs, an active ground plane, etc, which immediately creates a strong relationship between the pair.

More about the winning competition entry after the break.

The hotel proposal by BNKR Arquitectura aims to reproduce in material form the ephemeral process of the diffusion of sound. This is a process of vibrant outward expression and subsequent decay. It is a narrative of the loss of integrity and dematerialization in space. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Oppenheim Architecture + Design recently won the international competition to design a new hotel in Brooklyn, NY. A third pillar of the Williamsburg Bridge to emerge after 108 years. Their design of the Williamsburg hotel attempts to capture the essence of this vibrant neighborhood. Adjacent to both the Williamsburg Bridge and the historic Williamsburg Savings Bank, the building expresses itself as three dramatically proportioned, rectilinear volumes of varied height and materiality. Soaring high above the neighborhood, the hotel becomes the third pillar of the bridge, while serving as an archetypical tower to the domed basilica of the historical bank.

Sustainability was once again an important issue for Oppenheim Architecture + Design. The hotel will have geothermal, wind, and solar power generation, along with other resource saving strategies, for which they achieved Platinum LEED rating. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Architect: Cox Architecture Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Courtesy of Cox Architecture