“The plan, the section and the facade have equivalent geometries and manufacture a medium with constant qualities, forming an amalgam of architectural situations.”
Monaco Hotel
The hotel is the ultimate autonomous object of the urban development: the building floats on top of the water, in the middle of bay of Larvotto. The hotel residence is an autonomous architectural system in levitation. Its activities, its circulations, its uses, gathered and dense, offer a special relationship to calm water, and the landscape. Its principle of formation is a prolongation of the archipelago: the objects interact with each other, freely. The outcome is an unspecified form. This system of assembly is the architectural version of a city: an exceptionally gifted city, carried by a collective intelligence- interior ratios/external, density, vacuums, near/remote…
The aggregation of the small entities forms a homogeneous whole with a simple geometry. More than one succession of spaces, the hotel residence is an environment. The plan, the section and the facade have equivalent geometries and manufacture a medium with constant qualities, forming an amalgam of architectural situations. The limits between the interior and exterior do not exist: the air penetrates the building; the environment becomes a disconcerting succession of dubious insides and outsides. The six faces of the floating object are the result of an assembly of entities in a volume revealing the formation process of the environment. The facades, the roof and the ceilings are non-hierarchical, non-oriented, and completely equivalent.
The private program is divided into three parts: rooms, apartments and villas. It is distributed on all levels.
The first three levels include rooms of 30, 40, 50 and 70 m2. The fourth level offers accommodations of 140 to 260 m2. Finally, the fifth, sixth and seventh levels house luxury villas of 600 m2. Most of the rooms, apartments and villas extend towards the outside by terraces and balconies, with a view on surrounding landscape. The public program is also shared on all levels. It is accessible for all users of the hotel residence. It consists of a lobby (level 2), a swimming pool (level 4), a spa (3 levels) and two restaurants (levels 2 and 4). Each part of this program is specific and autonomous entity, with an independent function. The public program is a succession of extraordinary uses, proposing free, uncertain and surprising strolling. All public spaces are traversable, linking inside and outside.
The structural concept of floating object comes from the desire to highlight the logic of the underwater infrastructures - logic influenced by the structure of the archipelago. The infrastructure - 55 meters deep piles – like spouts out of water surfacing and becoming the superstructure. The public rooms, apartments, villas and programs are manufactured by the aggregation of a modular independent structural cage. These cages are assembled to form a coherent system .It is then suspended on a be-like horizontal system of circulations, which plays a part of overhanging beam. The facade - a skin made up of small white squares, pixels regularly arranged - motivates this ambiguous game of matter and void. It is continuous texture that coats every centimeter of the project disturbing the perceptions by reflective games.
The facade - a skin made up of small white squares, pixels arranged regularly - motivates this equivocal game of full and empty.
credits
Architects : OMA France (Clément Blanchet) in collaboration with Christian de Portzamparc, Elyzabeth De Portzamparc and F.O. Gehry
Clients : SAM Foncière maritime
Nature of the operation : urban competition
Realised in : 2007-2008
Status : Lost competition
Site : Monte Carlo, Monaco
Program : hotel
Budget : not indicated
Exact assignment : Design associate architect in charge at OMA
team composition
Render/images : Robota
Engineering : Tractebel, COWI