DESIGN NAME: THE MOOD Lyndhurst
PRIMARY FUNCTION: Boutique Hotel
INSPIRATION: "Flower" is the underlying theme for the entire design, based upon primarily the name of the street known in Chinese as "Bai Fa Street" or "street full of flowers." Secondly, the neighborhood is known for its "Cheongsam" taylors, "Cheongsam" being a classical stylish Chinese dress generally with large floral patterns.
Different parts of a flower are represented in different room types of the hotel, such as the seed, the sepal, the filament, the petal and the grain, with different colors, textures, choices of materials, etc. The flower features are transformed into the logo of the hotel.
UNIQUE PROPERTIES / PROJECT DESCRIPTION: This project was to demolish the existing 6-storey walk-up buildings on a small urban commercial site of just under than 2000SF, and to redevelop into what is known as THE MOOD lyndhurst, a 23-storey LEED certified boutique hotel. The boutique hotel is a new genre of building in Hong Kong, providing unique experience to its costumers who are expats or international travellers for an extensive period of stay for work or for leisure.
OPERATION / FLOW / INTERACTION: Our building / hotel, even though it faces a major pedestrian corridor or what is called "the escalator" that transfers people up and down the Mid-levels of Hong Kong, wants to be a quiet piece of architecture, with the 7 flower features subtly glowing at night.
PROJECT DURATION AND LOCATION: October 2010 - May 2015
38-42 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central, Hong Kong
FITS BEST INTO CATEGORY: Architecture, Building and Structure Design
|
PRODUCTION / REALIZATION TECHNOLOGY: The exterior of the building has a triple skin of curtain wall, a layer of charcoal grey frames and mullions on the inside, a layer of grey tinted glass in the middle, and a layer of white aluminum cladding with organic cellular shapes on the outside. Within this layer of cellular shapes, there are seven “flower” features imbedded and emit a light glow at night.
SPECIFICATIONS / TECHNICAL PROPERTIES: Site Area: 184 sm
Gross Floor Area: 2414 sm
Number of Stories: 23
Building Height: 85.3 m
TAGS: hotel, boutique, Hong Kong, Central, Soho, serviced apartment, flowers
RESEARCH ABSTRACT: Upon research of the history of Lyndhurst Terrace, we found that there were brothels in the neighborhood during the colonial Hong Kong period in the early part of the 20th century. That was why the street was named "Bai Fa Street" in Chinese or "street full of flowers." This neighborhood is also known for concentration of traditional Chinese taylors, who created the stylish dress called "Cheongsam" that became fashionable amongst social elites in the 1920s. Many Cheongsam used large floral patterns, and in the same way the building is designed like a Cheongsam fitted over the glass facade.
CHALLENGE: The creative challenge for us was to create these sculptural "flower" features on the exterior of the building. They are restricted to a certain width of protrusion from the face of the building according to local regulations, while we did not want them to be too flat. We put in LED lights on the inside of these "flowers" to allow them to glow at night. A number of full scale on-site mock-ups were constructed with plywood as well as metal, hoisted in situ with lighting effect prior to production of the real ones.
ADDED DATE: 2015-10-12 03:17:11
TEAM MEMBERS (3) : Architect: Ben Wong, Interior Designer: Jane Tse, Ming Chan and Project Manager: Alex Ling, Rich Yiu
IMAGE CREDITS: THEO TEXTURE
|