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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
Artist impressions of various sections of the Prora colossus and their new make-up (source: Seebad Prora):Previously View full entry
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
Related:Has Mecca Been Robbed of its History?Mecca's mega architecture casts shadow over hajj View full entry
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
Previously: Hotelier Andre Balazs to convert JFK’s historic TWA terminal into a hotel and conference center View full entry
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
Previously View full entry
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
Monocle's savetheokura.com petition website is still up, but it seems that the fate of Ol' Okura has been sealed. View full entry
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
Spirit of Space are known for their emotive, precisely choreographed short films exploring buildings and urban spaces. Their most recent film reports on Studio Gang's renovation of the Shoreland Hotel, a historic Chicago high-rise on the border of Lake Michigan. SOS's film looks into the guts of... View full entry
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
Previously: Chinese secretly copy Austrian town View full entry
The first guests at western Europe’s tallest hotel came expecting unforgettable views – but may have got more than they bargained for.
The bedrooms in Shangri-La’s luxury hotel, which opened last week in London’s 310m-tall Shard building, come with binoculars so guests can survey the city’s landmarks through the floor-to-ceiling windows. But thanks to a quirk in the building’s design, some rooms also come with potentially revealing views of other guests.
— ft.com
To get a sense of the kind of hotel they wanted, Mr. Stockhausen did extensive research with Mr. Anderson. This included looking at vintage images at the Library of Congress of hotels and European vacation spots. They also looked through hotel archives and studied the architecture of locales like the Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. — nytimes.com
Scenery at The Myrtle Flower Garden in Xiangyang, China will look quite different once the new hillside Myrtle Garden Hotel is built. Designed by graft lab architects and penda as a commission, the wooden haptic-structured hotel is ready to break ground within the next few weeks. — bustler.net
Sneak a peek of the new hotel:Head over to Bustler for full details.You can also click the thumbnails below for more images View full entry
Are you interested in visiting South Africa? Interested in seeing the real South Africa? Interested in experiencing how the real people live? Interested in tasting the poverty and hardship of life in a shanty town? And—most importantly—are you fearful and white? Congratulations! You're a perfect guest for the Shanty Town at Emoya Luxury Hotel and Spa, where, for less than $100 a night, you can get the authentic experience of living in a shanty town—without the bothersome shanty dwellers. — gawker.com
Since October 2013, staying at one of the 1920s-style Bauhaus dorm rooms is even more of an experience: One room was accurately reconstructed with original objects and furniture. The rest of the rooms will be personalized to reflect a former habitant, beginning with Alfred Arndt, the couple Albers and Franz Ehrlich. — bauhaus-dessau.de