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Aloft Hotels
This 10-year-old brand was launched before iPhones, before Instagram, and before “Selfie” made it into the dictionary. So Marriott hired us to re-imagine the story and elevate the experience of Aloft Hotels. We developed a fresh, new, contemporary identity that spoke to the self-expressive target guests by weaving music, art, and social media throughout the entire guest experience.
Since Aloft guests thrive on creating content, we make it part of the hotel experience from the moment they cross the threshold. We pick their image up on video, and then we render that image abstract, edit it, project it on a folded, faceted digital LED screen above the gathering spot we call PLAY. The couch at PLAY is designed to mirror the folded geometry above, so guests live an analog experience of the digital experience on screen.
SCREEN TO TABLE
Aloft guests are daring, experimental, early adopters and this extends to their food experiences as well. Aloft guests order breakfast at touch-screen kiosks. The design of the F&B area supports this forward-thinking concept and reinforces freshness by using easily re-freshed materials and temporary “pop-up” construction. Fresh, healthy food is served in individualized pots, with graphics inspired by pop art, and hand-made aesthetic details show in up in both the space and food packaging.
A STUDIO LOFT
The Aloft guestroom is the essence of a loft apartment writ large: a space that is open and airy, but with clearly delineated areas; a space that is light and neutral, allowing for a dynamic mix of textures, styles, and colors that flow. Mixed—but not mixed up; carefully selected and sequenced to produce a sense of joy and discovery. Like a great mixtape, a head-turning outfit, a fascinating moodboard by your savvy, playful friend.
Dallas, Texas, is one of America’s most car-dependent major metropolitan areas, with some of the biggest highways around its downtown. Pedestrians are a rare breed. But does that mean people don’t want to walk? In designing the mixed-use complex Dallas Alpha West, DF&A wagered that not having to use a car would actually come as a relief. The firm adopted the Dutch concept of the woonerf, or shared street, to create a 14-acre dynamic mixed-use plaza that prioritizes the pedestrian.
The challenge with this Manhattan project was as simple as it was daunting: build a modular hotel in one of the most tightly packed cities in the world—and make sure it doesn’t look “modular.”
Every architect in New York felt a heightened sense of allegiance to the city and the skyline in the wake of 9/11, and those of us building any new construction at the World Trade Center site shouldered an additional responsibility to history itself. Our brief was to build a 30-story hotel tower in Lower Manhattan that stands just steps from the Memorial Pools. Although it was not a part of Libeskind’s master plan for Ground Zero, the Courtyard designed by DF&A neighbors the four massive towers that underpin the complex, including the tallest building in the Western hemisphere, the 1,776-foot Tower 1. At less than a quarter of that height, our hotel provided an inviting public space for visitors and residents alike, but at an approachable, human scale. The majority of the floors face the World Trade Center site with a faceted glass exterior that appears to float above street level. But the podium is distinct: clad in an elegant steel mesh, it beckons as a glowing veil that transforms from day to night, and provides the lower floors with shade and privacy. The gift of protected proximity continues up above: a sky bar at the top of the building gives visitors a place where they can escape from and contemplate the city overlooking Memorial Park. All of it which creates what the New York Daily News describes as “a standout even among the starchitecture of Ground Zero.”
