W Hotel
Seoul, Korea
Studio Gaia, Tony Chi and RAD

A team of Studio Gaia, Tony Chi, and RAD extends the W hotel brand to asia, taking different approaches to cool design

© Seung Hoon Yum

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By Raul Barreneche

For its first property in Asia, Starwood Hotels and Resorts’ trendy, design-conscious W chain chose the Walkerhill complex outside downtown Seoul, an urban resort overlooking the Han River from the base of Mount Acha. The forested hillside site, which was named after U.N. General Walton H. Walker, opened as one of South Korea’s first international-caliber resorts in 1963. Today, the complex includes a duty-free shopping mall with international luxury brands, a Sheraton hotel, and the W, which opened in August 2004. The property is the chain’s third location outside the U.S., after Sydney and Mexico City.

The 14-story hotel contains some predictable functions—253 guest rooms (30 of them suites); two restaurants; a gym; a 50,000-square-foot spa with a café; and a business center—and less standard fare. Besides the requisite reception desk and concierge station, the 5,000-square-foot, wireless Internet–ready lobby (branded by Starwood as the Living Room) includes a 10,000-square-foot bar, a DJ booth, and loungy seating areas.

W commissioned three firms to design the hotel and its interiors. Aaron Tan of the Hong Kong firm RAD (a spin-off of the Asian branch of Rem Koolhaas’s OMA) designed the blue fritted-glass architectural shell, as well as the spa. Tony Chi and Associates of New York designed the hotel’s two high-end restaurants, Namu and Kitchen. And Studio Gaia, the New York design firm responsible for some of Manhattan’s trendiest restaurants and clubs in the 1990s (such as Bond Street, Republic, and Cafeteria) designed the lobby, guest rooms, and hotel store.

Ilan Waisbrod, president of Studio Gaia (named after his 17-year-old daughter), says one of his biggest challenges was to translate the intimate feeling of a boutique hotel to a space with the towering scale of a grand hotel lobby. Waisbrod broke the 5,000-square-foot double-height room into a series of smaller zones without walls, creating various sitting areas with modish, 1970s-inspired egg-shaped chairs and low-slung sofas built into the stairs.

Want the full story? Read the entire article in our November 2005 issue.
Subscribe to Architectural Record in print, or get Architectural Record digitally

Formal name of Project:
W Hotel

Location:
Seoul, Korea

Owner:
W Hotel Worldwide www.whotels.com

Architect:
Studio Gaia
401 Washington street, 4th floor
New York, NY 10012
212-680-3500
212-6803535 (fax)
contact@studiogaia.com
www.studiogaia.com