The Hotel—Residential Segment: Almost Home

The Hotel—Residential Segment: Almost Home

Chen, Chaomin (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment; The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design)

Frausto, S.E. (mentor)
Bouše, P. (mentor)
Groothuijse, B. (mentor)
Riedijk, M. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

The Berlage Post-MSc in Architecture and Urban Design

ARB301

2024-02-02

“Almost Home” is a residential hotel segment that is (almost) home to precariats on the move. It is part of The Hotel, a collective project that studies the hotel, both as a building type and as a place of hospitality, through a collection of fourteen individual contributions inside one skyscraper. The project imagines hospitality as a realm of exchange that condenses the diversity of the city through an assortment of guests, staff, and the broader public. 

The hotel is a function of temporality and hospitality. The study questions the requirements for an architecture of hospitality to welcome, host, and entertain. As an architecture of temporality—an architecture that is dynamic and ever-changing, embodying a sense of transience and constant activity—the hotel allows for experimentation, while anticipating adaptation to meet the changing demands of its temporary residents. The hotel, as type, is understood beyond its curated front. It is, instead, a place of anonymity and exchange, of served and serving, a place characterized by short stays in a lasting structure.

The skyscraper, as a formal and monumental object, appears to contrast the hotel’s temporality. In its autonomy, the skyscraper is a landmark in the skyline. Located in Midtown Manhattan—on the former site of Hotel Pennsylvania and adjacent to Penn Station—this project is a reflection on the metropolis of New York City. 

The Hotel consists of the design of the skyscraper as landmark—The Metropolitan—and the hotel as tenant—One Hotel. 

Collective propositions:
1. The Hotel embraces the frenetic energy of New York City while opposing its outward expansion. 
2. The Metropolitan will outlast One Hotel.
3. One Hotel accommodates fourteen types of guests, and its staff.
4. One Hotel shares accommodation, amenities, systems, and services with a 24/7 cycle.
5. The Hotel sets a standard for an architecture of hospitality.

Residential segment proposition:

1. Purposeful precariats in New York City reject traditional senses of home.
2. Only in the middle of the skyscraper can precariats find seclusion and connection to Manhattan.
3. A residential hotel encourages its guests to consider the value of a life unbound from place.
4. By sharing with other long-term guests of One Hotel, the Residential segment asks the guests to consider either staying alone “at home,” or together “at home.”
5. A home is a space where you have to do chores.

Hotel
New York City
Skyscraper
Precariat
Chores

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Student theses

master thesis

© 2024 Chaomin Chen