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Douglas Sharpe

Douglas Sharpe

Tampa, FL, US

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Nansha Coastal Garden Hotel

The scope of the studio is to design a multi-phase project which includes a 5-star hotel, residential units, and commercial spaces all within a site of one million square feet. The studio was unique in the fact that we were given the opportunity of traveling to our project site in Guangzhou, China while developing the project with the consultation of a Chinese architecture/engineering firm that practices in China’s Nansha District. The project was to be submitted as a proposal that met the programmatic guidelines required by a private developer, while also adhering to Chinese building codes. The images being presented are of the hotel phase of the project.

Our design team, a three member group, designed our hotel to exist as a visual icon for the development. The height of the tower reaches the allowed maximum of 80 meters, and in the tower is where hotel accomodations were to be located which allows guests to have views of the surrounding landscape. The massing diagram indicates that larger programs, such as conference rooms and banquet halls are located on lower levels and the tower builds itself up. The program distribution diagram represents the separate wings in which programs are clustered based on categories of public, semi-public, and private spaces. The green path networks are the main circulation arteries which interconnect all of the hotel spaces and will lead to the future development phases of the proposed commercial and residential zones and buildings.

 

The tower is designed as a simple mass with highly considered splits and voids taken from the mass which allow for the penetration of daylight and circulation. A very crucial component of the hotel is the proposed double-skin facade which acts not only as a design feature - for instance one section of the facade peels away from the tower and acts as a dramatic canopy for the grand entrance - but the facade also acts as a performative mechanism for energy savings. The site, located in southern China, has many daylighting hours and in order to reduce sunlight glare and heat gain within the interior, the facade will reflect and diffuse direct light, as illustrated in the building section. Additional benefits of the facade include a passive cooling system that occurs through the chimney effect, where the cool air at ground level passes through the facade and is released as warm air at the top of the tower. One more beneficial feature of the facade will be the inclusion of translucent solar panels which will convert annual daylighting hours into renewable on-site energy.

 
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Status: School Project
Location: Guangzhou, CN