High rise hotel

H E U C

Project idea

The action area is located at the place of a historical building that is being demolished and meant a lot to the people. The main idea of the design is to join historical building (Bherawi Theater) with the high rise. The historical building is represented with the low rise and the high rise with the tower. Then the low rise is tilted to show the history being forgotten, falling. Then the tower and the low rise are joined with curved structural elements to show a smooth transition from the history to the high tech and show their unified strength.

Project description

The design project is a 206-meter high-rise Hotel building, located in the middle of Churcher ave Mexico, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia covering a plot area of 6,700 meters. The building has two entrances one for vehicles and the other for pedestrians.
Buildings these days are becoming more and more advanced with time and technology advancement. The project will be might use advanced materials and building systems but will also be sensitive to the action area and the people’s lives and their day-to-day activities. The demolished building meant more for the people and their lifestyle, especially the building’s corridor. In this project, the form creates the feeling of the corridor and sustains their lifestyle and activity by providing them with spaces.
The building has a podium with commercial programs, offices, a gallery, and an annex with a supermarket, a Traditional café, and a theater. Both the podium and annex have 7 floors with 4 meters floor to ceiling height. The annex and the podium are connected with 2 bridges the first one serves as an outdoor cafe located on the 1st floor and the second one connects the theater and the gallery which is located on the 5th floor. The rooms will be categorized into 5, Standard rooms (Single/double), Deluxe, Family Deluxe, Residence suit, and penthouse, all with their special qualities and use. The rooms will be from the 11th floor to the 51st with 3 meters floor to ceiling height and mixed throughout the tower. There will be 2 swimming pools, one at the end of the podium and the other at the end of the tower. The building has surface and basement parking with a valet system. The basement has 276 parking spaces with a loading and unloading dock. Also has separate entry and exit with checkpoints. The main kitchen and the laundry area are in the first basement along with the HVAC control rooms and Electric server rooms.

Technical information

The podium represents the history falling from the outside but from the inside, it represents hope. The floors on the podium are cut diagonally to insert light and certain space quality and visual connection. To create continuity same measure is taken on the tower to create visual connection and quality. On the tower, the floors create the podiums pattern and will have natural light and ventilation. The floor openings will also serve as a sky garden. Because of the wind pressure of Addis Ababa, it is not possible to open windows above the 16th floor so the openings are created by Double glazing and vertically overlapping the windows to break the wind pressure.
The building has two entrances on separate floors because of the contour level difference. The vehicle entrance from the west is on the ground floor level 0.00 and the pedestrian entrance from the east is on the first-floor level 4.00.
The building’s structure has two cores, a steel frame structure, and a frame concrete structure. Multiple structure solutions were also required for the podium because of the cantilever and swimming pool load. The core structure supports the swimming pool at the end of the tower and the steel frames and concrete frames support the ones on the podium.
The facade is a moveable Vertical shading device rotating 1800 which can be controlled separately on every floor with a remote controller. The cleaning system is also controlled automatically to clean at a time intervals.
The building recycles a swimming pool and has a rainwater harvesting system. The rainwater is collected through the roof and balconies. The collected rainwater is for watering greenery and laundry purposes only. There are two mechanical floors one on the 9th floor for maintenance and joining the system lines together and the other on the 48th floor for swimming pool recycling system and maintenance. The HVAC systems are distributed through the core and four concrete holes and are controlled on the basement floor. The main Kitchen and laundry are also in the basement and connected to the service elevators.