CONCEPT
The Hyatt Hotel provides a 400 room airport hotel for short term stays to facilitate travel in and out of the Charles DeGaulle Airport. In addition, the necessary hotel amenities: meeting facilities, bistro cafe, restaurant and health club facilities are provided.
Typological/Formal Development Situated in an undefined suburban area between Paris and Roissy, bounded by the A1 expressway, this project seeks to provide a positive spatial focus in an otherwise non-spatial environment. Conceptually, this project is seen as a modern interpretation of the traditional Parisian courtyard hotel. This is manifested in the sequential spatial organization. The inter-relationship between exterior and interior garden rooms, landscape and material usage. Formally, two five-story hotel room blocks define the central spatial axis of the project. These blocks form the spatial edges for the exterior courtyard garden and the interior atrium garden. A curving garden trellis wall executed in steel and glass further defines the exterior garden. This central axis is terminated by the conference facility, which is situated between the two hotel wings. Organization The plan organization of this project responds to the efficient functional and technical requirements of a hotel. Two double loaded linear hotel room wings from the basis of the plan figure. The top three floors of these wings contain the required 400 rooms. The lower two floors of these wings contain the front of house and support spaces for the major functions of the interior garden atrium, bistro cafe, lobby bar, and of the ballroom/meeting room facility. The hotel entrance is through the parking parterre, which is bisected by a linear four square axis of tall trees. This connects to the auto court and to the exterior garden court and interior garden atrium. Overlapping linear garden elements connect and inter-lock these various courts. The interior garden atrium and exterior garden court developed work on several levels to energize hotel life. They form a central controlled environment, they provide a visual focus for the hotel and while transitory and sequentially a part of entering the hotel, they also provide places to gather, relax and experience an urban quality of life within the suburban setting of the hotel. The opening walls of the court develop as a background appropriately expressing the repetitive nature of the hotel room blocks. This is further accentuated by the modulation of the four square hotel room windows. A two-story base mediates between the garden and room floors. The projecting elevator lobbies forming loggias from which to view the garden activities break the length of the wall.
Integral to the spatial development of the hotel are the garden elements, which reinforce the geometry of the spaces while forming the linkages and connections of the major public spaces. A diagonal axis of tall trees planted in a four square configuration forms a connecting boulevard from the parking parterres through the auto court to the exterior garden court. A series of linear garden elements, bamboo, grass, gravel and water form a modern parterre linking the exterior garden with the interior garden. These patterned garden spaces provide the color and life of the hotel. They change from season to season from day to night. They provide a place of repose as well as a place to view. Construction Technically, clues from the image of air transportation inform the material use. Thus, the aluminum skin with radius corners encloses the hotel wings. There are lifted above the base of dark tile. The curving roof geometry further highlights this metaphor. The building is rendered in the modern idiom of glass and steel.
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