Zerafa Studio was asked to develop the massing and façade design for a proposed 30-story(436 room) hotel tower and concept design for the podium expansion of the existing Fallsview Plaza Hotel property. With an approved tower floor plan and schematic structural layout in place, the owner requested that only minor modifications to the plan be considered. The irregular geometry of the approved plan, a by-product of modifications made to preserve the adjacent Hilton Hotel’s Fallsview view corridor, posed significant challenges to design effort. The related podium design effort would be part of an ongoing design review of the proposed new retail and entertainment program within the framework of the approved “as-of-right” podium massing.

As the new tower would be highly visible within the city skyline from multiple directions, the proposed massing was critically important. The inherent complexity of the plan geometry required a series of significant formal gestures to produce a strong and identifiable form. The resolution of the tower massing at the top was essential to our design. As the building is part of a row of towers along Fallsview Blvd, the overall massing and specific design of the roof line were considered essential to create a clear identity for the tower. A number of limited yet significant modifications to the plan and structure were made, particularly at the tower corners, to craft the tower form into two distinct volumes, each defined by an opaque outer façade layer. The primary volume layer was then extended up above the roof line to form a large canted roof form that separates from the tower and slopes down towards the neighboring tower to create a void at the roof.

Our tower façade design was limited to the use of a modular pre-fabricated stucco wall panel with an integral window and through-wall fancoil system. As such, the repetitive rhythm of window apertures and the overall façade scale were critical design issues to address. With the north and south shear walls essentially defined as opaque layers, the east and west room-facades were designed as an articulated infill. In order to mitigate the repetitive window pattern inherent in the required room layout, a shifting pattern of light and dark vertical floor-height panels was created. The typical aluminum window unit over louver panel was set into the recessed 5’ wide dark-panel. The light-panels were projected out to create a subtle texture highlighted by the color change. Maintaining the window location, the modular façade panel was then shifted every two floors to mitigate the typical floor-by-floor scale and highlight the alternating pattern. The resulting design creates a dynamic rhythm on the east and west façades which effectively reduces the visual weight of a mostly opaque infill wall captured within the more static façade layers to the north and south.

The new hotel tower is currently under construction in an approved 10-story(126 room) configuration along with the related podium expansion while the 30-story tower design has been submitted for zoning approval and the required Peer Review process.