Adventures in Architecture

The Couture Hotel
42nd and 5th Avenue, Manhattan, New York City

3rd Year Design Studio
Critic: Thomas Lesser
Media: SoftImage XSI

Concept:

Set in the heart of Manhattan’s fashion district, across from Bryant Park, the Couture hotel was programmed as a hybrid space, combining active workspaces such as design studios, photo studios, galleries and runways with hotel, retail and bar/restaurant programs. The design progressed through multiple iterations which experimented with the interaction and juxtaposition of different programs. Each spatial strip moving through the building delineated a particular program. Beginning with simple, parallel strips, the organization of the building became more complex, through warping, griding and finally weaving to create more exotic and intriguing juxtapositions.

The upper floor bar, for example, is mostly wrapped with hotel rooms to create a discretely voyeuristic public space, where the two programs are only separated by a translucent wall. The hotel guests become graphic actors on the walls of the club, while the partition material provides them anonymity. The circulation paths are also separated by program except for a few key point which allow you to cross from the public hotel spaces, to the working spaces to the social space; providing further anonymity between actors on either side of the walls.

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