French architects [SCAU] are planning to build a 'water wheel hotel' on the banks of the Seine, which resembles the London Eye but with 'room capsules' that would rotate constantly. ...[However,] the wheel hotel is not intended to be a permanent structure. 'It is made of wood and it will only take four days to assemble or dismantle it, so it could be transported by barge and re-erected elsewhere on the river' [said Maxime Barbier of SCAU] — The Telegraph

Dubai, the city of superlatives, is set to get a new tower on Sheikh Zayed Road that will have an artificial beach and a rainforest-like landscape development on top of the tower's podium. [...]

The project consists of two towers, 47 storeys high with a combined five-storey podium and two basement levels, that will house the facilities. [...]

Kieferle & Partner is the architect. — emirates247.com

Tokyo’s venerable Hotel Okura is getting a remake, starting next week.

Over the course of the past 53 years since its opening on May 20, 1962, the Okura, located in Toranomon, has earned an unsurpassed reputation both at home and abroad as a luxury hotel to represent Japan.

The hotel said in a statement that it will maintain the Japanese traditional aesthetics and the basics of the architecture style of Hotel Okura. — japantoday.com

For decades, tourists have been coming to Southern California's Coachella Valley, drawn by spectacular mountain vistas, great weather and lush landscapes.

Those landscapes have been, for the most part, man-made — an artificial oasis in a land of desert. [...]

As California enters a fourth year of drought and state and local water officials unveil a series of conservation dictates, at least some hotels in the valley — big and small — have begun launching water conservation measures. — USA Today

The Hotel Okura, built in 1962 in time for the 1964 Olympics, is slated to be torn down in September to make way for a bigger, fancier Okura, in time for the 2020 Olympics. (The less-good, less-famous southern wing of the old Okura, added in 1973, will be allowed to stay.) [...]

There will never be this particular hush again in the middle of Tokyo. You will have to have been there to know what you will soon miss. — nytimes.com

Axel Bering and Michael Jacobi, the main investors behind the Prora project, claim they could not care less about a building once being dedicated to Hitler. [...]

He and his partner, Michael Jacobi, both confess that because they had to comply with German regulations, their investment carries some Third Reich architecture qualities. They did, however, add a balcony, but otherwise they see Prora as a nice beach town and a solid investment. — thedailybeast.com

Abraj Kudai is to become the world's largest hotel located in Makkah, Saudi Arabia and upon completion, will offer 10,000 rooms in 12 separate towers. [...]

The Saudi Binladin Group holds the main construction contract, and work on the $3.5 billion hospitality project has already started. [...]

The architecture is set to create an iconic landmark that will reflect a contemporary interpretation of a traditional desert fortress. — constructionweekonline.com

After years of delays, Amsterdam RAI is getting its own hotel and with its 650 rooms, Nhow RAI will win the title of largest hotel in the Netherlands. The design of the building was chosen from eleven candidates and is designed by Rem Koolhaas from well-known Rotterdam architecture firm OMA. [...]

Among the features will be a virtual 3D holographic meeting space for having “in person” meetings with the holographs of people in another location. — nltimes.nl

[JetBlue Airways] reportedly wants to get into the hotel business by partnering with New York-based hotel developer MCR Development to turn the landmarked terminal into a 500-room hotel. The deal isn't final—the parties are in 'advanced negotiations'—so things could still fall apart...The Port Authority previously chose hotelier Andre Balazs as the developer, but Balazs backed out after realizing how long the project would take. He told the [WSJ] his company had 'more interesting opportunities.' — ny.curbed.com

I think our hope is that it will make guests connect to the hotel in a different way by understanding the thoughts of the architect and the designer, who wanted to create more of a community than a typical hotel lobby — intransit.blogs.nytimes.com

Built by the Third Reich in the run-up to World War II, the Strength Through Joy resort was a Nazi vision of tourism’s future. Happy, healthy Aryans would stay and play at the 10,000-room complex on the Baltic Sea, eating, swimming and even bowling for the Führer. Think Hitler’s Cancun.

[...] a group of investors in this seaside town is now doing what the Nazis never could: realizing the site’s final stage of transformation into a vacation wonderland. — washingtonpost.com

News of the planned destruction of the Hotel Okura building in Tokyo to make way for a larger 38-story glass tower has brought cries of protest in Japan and elsewhere in the world. Monocle, the wide-ranging global magazine, has started a petition to save the old Okura on behalf of “all lovers of modern Japanese architecture.” — nytimes.com

Looking eastward from the canyon's popular South Rim, visitors could soon see a hive of construction as workers build restaurants, hotels and shops on a distant mesa on the Navajo Indian reservation.

The developers also plan a gondola ride from those attractions to whisk tourists to the canyon floor, where they would stroll along an elevated riverside walkway to a restaurant at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers. — latimes.com

Luxury hotel chain Starwood Hotels unveiled the upcoming opening of The Castle Hotel in Dalian, a major seaport city in China’s northeastern Liaoning province. This makes it one of the various examples of European-inspired architecture sprouting across China in recent years.

Starwood Hotels announced in a press release of the opening of The Castle Hotel later this year, when it is done with its final stages of interior renovation. — jingdaily.com