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Downtown Brooklyn Hotel
The Hilton Motto Hotel at 88 Schermerhorn will be an industry leader in its embrace of 100 percent modular construction as well as its sleek and slender profile and ultramodern underground bar and restaurant.
100% MODULAR
We’re always seeking to innovate. While our 842 6th Avenue modular hotel includes a concrete core and fire stairs, in Brooklyn, due to extremely tight site constraints, we’re developing an all-steel, 100% modular approach. The entire core of the building will be comprised of two extra long modules, thereby removing any concrete from above the second story of the building.
Motto doesn’t just shrink the size of a regular hotel room and call it “micro.” Each room type is carefully designed to make ingenious use of a small space. “The Flex,” for instance, cleverly converts from living quarters to sleep space.
Our prototype hotel room for MiTek’s modular initiative reflects our passionate belief that modular technology should serve architectural design, not supersede it. Creativity and formal expression are still possible within the parameters of factory production; efficiency does not preclude beauty.
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.”
For the only high-rise modular tower in a high seismic zone in America, our first priority is planning for an earthquake. But beyond that is where it gets truly interesting. We designed a tower to fit in . . . even while it stands out. The project is located between two historic buildings —the Chancery Building and the Finance Building — and down the street from an architectural gem — Willis Polk’s Hobart Building. To keep from overshadowing our neighbors, we first broke our tower into four parts to decrease its visual dominance. Then we designed a façade patterned to emphasize depth, shadow, and texture, like the façades of our neighboring buildings, albeit with steel mesh instead of terra-cotta.
