Courtyard by Marriott 4*

We are very proud to say that Courtyard by Marriott marks its entrance on the Romanian market with this hotel. Moreover, the construction is placed in Bucharest's no. 1 business area, Pipera - 2A Dimitrie Pompei Blvd.  where no other brand hotel is present now. The project, which meant a construction investment of 13 million Euros on a land of approximately 2800 m2, started in the autumn of 2017 and it is scheduled to welcome its first guests in the summer of 2019.

Further on, Ivona Amariței, one of the eight Senior Partners at Cumulus, a hotel and office architect and one of the hotel’s project coordinators, takes us through some of the main project’s challenges.

Structure challenges: The hotel has 1000 m2 of built-in conference rooms​​, although this brand does not usually integrate large conference rooms & ballrooms into its structure. In the present case, the brand agreed to adapt its hotel to the office area environment and we realized it was a very advantageous package. The narrow land and large spaces under the guestrooms floors were the real challenge in the structure management.

Concept: Tasty urban burger enters the business club

Conceptually the hotel resembles a great tasty urban burger due to its multiple uses. We attained this concept by merging the functionalities at hand and placing them logically in a stratification, which is reflected in the spaces and the used materials - walnut, marble, glass-mirror. So, we basically designed the hotel with the fully open ground floor, where you have the lobby, the reception and the restaurant, semiprivate space on the1st floor with conferences/ballrooms and private upper floors with guestrooms”, Ivona recounts. In the presence and texture of glass, the indoors’ profoundness is changing from ground floor to upper floors, from large clear glass to extreme outside mirrored glass at 1st floor and “eye” windows to guestrooms.

Style challenges: Romanian tradition meets vacation & business

It was very interesting because these brands have very well-defined recipes that Marriott prepares in detail, both from an appearance and a function perspective, and we tried to squeeze in some Romanian image. Basically, this brand is addressed to corporate business people who need to feel like they are at home and on the go - that is, they need an element of familiarity and something to remind them of their holiday. We found a breach and we introduced some details that point out towards Romania - we figured that we could achieve this by placing some very nice traditional ceramic plates instead of the usual paintings on the room walls. Likewise, for the façades, we used the pattern of traditional fabrics, which you encounter visually throughout the building and in the bar area – it is a zigzag created on the façade of a very high glass wall of 6 m on the first floor and a 5 m wall downstairs.

Integrating the zig zag pattern implied a greater investment effort for our customer, but we persuaded him. In all the other places in the hotel you find hints of Romanian elements. The chosen color was blue, which reminds of the Mediterranean Sea and creates a holiday atmosphere. A great emphasis has been placed on the details, starting from the curtain texture to the way the light enters the rooms and the way the office chair inside the chambers rotates.

Construction challenges

The work was assiduous and involved a rather large team of four architects. It was a project that put us face to face with many complex situations that we had to solve and to which we had to find effective solutions.

The land was provocative because it was very small and although there were many restrictions from the city, we managed to build a very condensed building with 3 basements, 13 floors and a technical floor of about 55 meters.

Architectural design challenges

We worked on the BIM platform, Cumulus being among the first architectural offices to integrate this tool into its working environment. This involves recreating all elements of the building from the perspective of all the specialties involved in the process - structure, installation, architecture - in a 3D software, with dynamic elements that can record technical information - materials used, layer thicknesses and can generate a bill of quantities. The goal is better coordination during the project and a reduction of site losses, saving up to 20% during construction.

The team

We want to acknowledge the team which has worked on the project and thank them for their work and professionalism: business developer arch. Liviu Zăgan, arch. Ivona Amariței  contract manager, technical & concept coordinator; project leaders  arch. Maria Fofircă and arch. Alexandra Nicolau, arch. George Nițoiu, arch. Corina Nicolae, arch. Laura Parghel.

Address  Dimitrie Pompei Boulevard, No. 2A

Project commencement: Autumn 2017 

Opening: summer 2019

Design milestones: PUD, concept, PAC, technical project up to execution details

No. of rooms: 259 rooms;

Ballroom 1: 115 m2

Ballroom 2 : 185 m2

Meeting rooms : Rooms of 35-45 m2

Conference room area: 107m2

Overground built area: 11.328m2

Underground built area: 5.700m2

Structure: 3S+P+13+ technical floor

Site surface  2800m2