Courtyard by Marriott 4*
As you know, we have been working on developing 4 new brand hotels, each one of them being the first in their category to be opened in Bucharest.
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