Hotel in Culture Village
The site for the future Hotel occupies a prominent location in Culture Village, Dubai, a new multi-purpose development along the shoreline of the Dubai Creek that aims to become an attractive urban settlement where modern architecture and Islamic tradition blend to achieve a lively and unique lifestyle.
The hotel has a varied program with several uses (hotel rooms restaurant, gym, spa, swimming pool, retail spaces and business center) that will contribute to enhancing the activity of the surrounding public space. Our objective is to create an urban landmark that can articulate these different uses while solving a complex building site with an irregular geometry, different land heights, the crossing of a main road over the water body, etc. These conditions are taken as an opportunity to create an iconic building that contributes to the enlivenment of the adjacent road and inferior promenade, enhancing the character of the urban environment.
With these considerations in mind, the building has been conceived as the prow of a boat overlooking the creek and the new lively surroundings. A compact, vertical volume accommodates the hotel rooms, as well as the retail spaces and main entrance located on the west side of the building, by the adjacent street; while the lower, more horizontal piece on the promenade level contains several suites, a swimming pool terrace looking over the water, and the public restaurant, creating a human-scale active edge along the promenade that will contribute to activating the water front.
The project aims to display a contemporary formal expression, while reinterpreting some of the features of traditional Islamic architecture (shading devices such as lattices and screens, balconies, natural ventilation, interior open spaces, etc.) in order to achieve a sustainable and efficient design that minimizes the impact of Dubai’s characteristic hot and humid climate. This kind of approach based on the combination of modern architecture and the contemporary interpretation of vernacular features has been regularly followed by our office, in line with our Mediterranean tradition, during our wide experience in luxury hotel buildings and overall high-standard projects.
