John O'Ceallaigh, The Daily Telegraph, May 13, 2014
Prolific architect Zaha Hadid has designed a superyacht, wine bottle and swimwear in addition to buildings such as the London’s Aquatic Centre and Glasgow’s Riverside Museum . Scheduled for completion in early 2017, her latest project is the City of Dreams Hotel Tower in Macau.
The 40-storey building will house approximately 780 guestrooms, suites and sky villas, as well as leisure facilities including a spa, restaurants and “sky pool”. The centre of the structure is broken by a series of voids which, according to Zaha Hadid architects “merge traditional architectural elements of roof, wall and ceiling to create a sculptural form that defines many of the hotel’s internal public spaces”.
Macau, which like Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, is a former Portuguese colony that is particularly well known for its casinos and which now derives much of its income from tourism. The Zaha Hadid-designed hotel should provide a sophisticated new accommodation option for the millions who visit Macau each year, but it won’t be the architect’s first completed hotel. The Hadid-designed ME by Meliá hotel in Dubai is due to open in 2016, and she has also designed a floor of Madrid’s Hotel Puerta America. The latter property also features floors designed by Jean Nouvel, John Pawon and Ron Arad and is one of a internationally recognised number of hotels that have been designed by world-famous architects .
As distinctive as it will be, Zaha Hadid’s City of Dreams Hotel Tower isn’t the only unusual hotel set to draw tourists to China. The country’s increased prosperity has allowed the development of various extravagant and unexpected hotels throughout the country, from a “floating horseshoe hotel” in Huzhou to a luxury “cave hotel” near Shanghai . You can see some of these audacious designs in our gallery .
