The Whale

This was a studio project.  Each student was tasked to incorporate the concepts of fake (ironic) and real (sincere) in the design of a hotel.

As a class, we examined hotels in two different regions, Santa Fe, NM and Las Vegas, NV.  Hotels in Santa Fe, market the authenticity of pueblo or southwest culture.  In Las Vegas, properties are promoted as an experience, reproducing places like Paris, New York, or Italy.

I used a theater motif, defining the hotel as a stage, and the guest as actors.  The hotel is a place of temporary stay where people and ideas come and go with every check in and out. The temporally nature of the hotel allows the guest to become altered versions of themselves during their stay at the hotel. As soon as the guest arrives, they determine which role they will play.   Once they pass through the threshold, they are an actor on the hotel stage.  They play their chosen character in the public spaces of the hotel.  The lobby and restaurants are open spaces which can be manipulated to enhance the characters and their ideas.  The space can encourage interaction between characters or offer spaces of solitude.

When the guest goes to their room, they take off the skin of the character and are themselves. In my design, the connection to the outside is a window where they can watch the other actors on the hotel stage.  When the guest leaves their room, they use the emptiness of the hall for transition.  They move like an actor who is backstage changing into their new costume for the next act.