Yas Hotel

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Building information

Yas Hotel - day time

The Yas Hotel is a 5-star hotel in Abu Dhabi, opened on November 3, 2009 to the general public after a pre-opening at the same time with the Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix. The project was broadcast worldwide as the center piece of the new Yas Marina Circuit, and is the first newly constructed building to cross over a Formula One race track. The race will pass through the building's heart, and right under a covered bridge that links the two 12-story towers of the Yas Hotel.


The Yas Hotel is sited on land and water celebrating both the raceway circuit as well as the Yas Marina. It was a key feature of the grand finale to the Formula One circuit for 2009 on November 1 and seen by over 600 million viewers worldwide during the race day coverage. Project completion was achieved in under two years from design initiation to completed building.

Yas Hotel - night time

Architect/Designer: Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture, Asymptote Architecture [1]

Lighting Design: Arup Lighting - a New York lighting design firm

Program type: Hotel

Project size: 85,000 square meters

Project start: November 2007

Project completion: October 2009

Location: Abu Dhabi, UAE

Client: Aldar Properties PJSC


Building analysis

The Yas hotel comprises of two 12-story buildings that go across the Yas Marina race track, and contains 500 rooms with totally 279,000 square foot. The designers employed many ground-breaking technologies and experimented with digitally-enabled and interactive designs.

The designers were inspired by the 'art' and poetics of motor racing, specifically Formula One, coupled with the making of a place that celebrates Abu Dhabi as a cultural and technological center with exceptional creative achievements. Hani Rashid called it “A perfect union and harmonious interplay between elegance and spectacle.”

“Asymptote envisioned an architectural landmark embodying various key influences and inspirations ranging from the aesthetics and forms associated with speed, movement and spectacle to the artistry and geometries forming the basis of ancient Islamic art and craft traditions.” [2]

The main design attraction is the exterior curvilinear grid-shell covered with over 5,300 diamond-shaped steel panels, containing nearly 5000 RGBW LED fixtures that are controlled through remote device management (RDM) protocol. It features color-changing lighting sequences and customized 3D low-resolution video content on the grid-shell. This is the world’s biggest LED project to date.

You expect the food to be nothing short of spectacular when you are dining in the most exciting hotel in the world. Inside the hotel, there are seven restaurants serves the finest specialties from around the world. Choose from a colourful host of eateries, from the freshest seafood and sushi to rustic Italian, regional Indian cuisine, and a stylish array of bars and lounges. Among them, a Chinese restaurant - Noodle Box serves contemporary Asian food, features specialties from the whole of Southeast Asia in a vibrant atmosphere.

Detail

Detail of banquette seating

Inside the Noodle Box, the banquette seating with thick high back and comfortable cushion wraps around 2 long walls of the dining room. Cove lights hide on top of the high cushioning back of the banquette seating, back lit the dark color fabric wall covering to add texture to the room.

The frame of the banquette is made of hardwood. A foundation box is crew to the floor, then a 'L' shape seat is constructed and held together by wood screws. 4" foam padding and fabric upholstery is then applied for the finished look. The look is very streamline and clean. The use of large pattern fabric upholstery back along the walls helps to add rythem, and accentuate the luxury feel of the restaurant.


Architect/Designer

Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture are leading architectural practitioners of their generation whose innovative work and academic contributions have received international acclaim. Since Asymptote’s founding in 1988, the award-winning New York City based architectural firm has been at the forefront of technological innovation, in the field of architecture and design and garnered praise for visionary building designs, large-scale master plans, innovative interiors, art installations, virtual reality environments and object design.

Asymptote earned its reputation for experimentation and virtual and hybrid architecture. The studio’s ventures have ranged from spatial experiments and installations to buildings, urban design and interactive digital environments and architectures. It has produced high experimental art installations that make artistic use of digital media at such venues as theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Documental X! in Kassel Germany, the Shirn Kunstahlle in Frankfurt and the Ministry of Public Works in Madrid.

Rashid and Couture's work is intriguing because it draws inspiration from a wide range of sources not traditionally associated with architecture -- among them the design of airline interiors, sporting equipment, and organic systems like seashells and honeycombs; and various means of communicating and disseminating information. Their projects are concerned as much with light, speed, and traversing virtual boundaries as with "real-world" geometries and building systems. Hani Rashid is one of the founding instructors in the "paperless studio" curriculum at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, a program of study that emphasizes designing directly via computers and communications networks and encourages students to pursue investigations into the evolving possibilities of digital design and "placeless" environments.[3]

In 2000 Hani Rashid represented the United States at the Venice Biennale of Architecture and in 2004 Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture were awarded the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts given in recognition of exceptional contributions to the progress and merging of the fields and disciplines of art and architecture.

Hani Rashid was born in Eygpt and raised in Canada. He received his bachelor of architecture degree in 1983 from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and an M.A. in architecture 1985 from the Cranbrook academy of art in the United States. Since 1989, Hani Rashid has been an Associate Professor of Architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation where he co-developed many of the school’s more progressive design programs. At present Hani Rashid also holds the prestige Kenzo Tange chair for architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Hani Rashid has consistently been at the leading edge when it comes to the development of products, exhibition concepts, digital environments, master plans and building designs. Time Magazine named Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture as being two of the most important designers of the new century.

Recognized internationally as both leading-edge architects and virtual-reality artists as well as sought-after critics and teachers, Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid have emphasized research into cultural trends and technological influences as the core of their practice. Asymptote’s work has been widely published and curate is included in various private and public collections including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Pinothek in Munich, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Franc Centre in Orleans, France.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ http://www.asymptote.net
  2. ↑ http://www.archdaily.com/43336/the-yas-hotel-asymptote/
  3. ↑ http://www.arcspace.com/books/Asymptote_FLUX/flux_book.html

Student contributions

  • Grace Chen, Spring 2010

External links

Additional resources

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