The Park Hotel Hyderabad was the recipient of two prestigious awards at the MIPIM 2011 global property market last week: the Special Jury Award for Best Overall Development and Best Hotel & Tourism Resort. The Park eclipsed the other twenty nominated projects to secure the special award, the highest honor given annually to an architectural project at the international real estate conference.
The jury, chaired this year by Michael Strong, Chairman and CEO of EMEA CB Richard Ellis, United Kingdom, unanimously agreed that the design and execution of The Park Hotel, located in the central Indian city of Hyderabad, merited special distinction as MIPIM’s best overall development. The MIPIM Awards showcase exemplar architectural design and robust responses to the client brief. Conference delegates vote on their favorite projects over the duration of the four-day conference, ultimately choosing a winner in each category. More than 18,000 individuals attended the global real estate conference, which took place from March 7 – 10, 2011 in Cannes, France.
Thomas Behr and Brant Coletta, Directors in SOM’s New York office, accepted the award on behalf of the firm and acknowledged the client, Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels, for its vision and commitment to sustainable design.
Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP (SOM), The Park Hotel Hyderabad is the flagship hotel for The Park Hotel Group. This 531,550-square-foot, 270-room hotel infuses a modern, sustainable design with the local craft traditions, and is influenced by the region’s reputation as a center for the design and production of gemstones and textiles. The project is distinctive for its profound implementation of sustainable design strategies, with special attention paid to the building’s relationship to its site, daylighting and views.
Solar studies influenced the site orientation and building massing, with program spaces concentrated in the north and south facades, and service circulation on the west to reduce heat gain. The hotel rooms are raised to allow more expansive views, situated on top of a podium comprised of retail spaces, art galleries, and banquet halls open to guests and visitors.
The building’s innovative façade provides a range of transparency according to the needs of the spaces inside. Perforated and embossed metal screens over a high?performance glazing system give privacy to the hotel rooms while allowing diffused daylight to enter the interior spaces, and provides acoustic insulation from trains passing nearby. The opaque areas of the cladding shield the hotel’s service areas from public view. The shape of the facade’s openings, as well as the three-dimensional patterns on the screens themselves, were inspired by the forms of the metalwork of the crown jewels of the Nizam, the city’s historic ruling dynasty.
About Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP
SOM is one of the leading architecture, interior design, engineering, and urban-planning firms in the world, with a 75-year reputation for design excellence and a portfolio that includes some of the most important architectural accomplishments of the 20th and 21st centuries. Since its inception, SOM has been a leader in the research and development of specialized technologies, new processes and innovative ideas, many of which have had a palpable and lasting impact on the design profession and the physical environment. The firm’s longstanding leadership in design and building technology has been honored with more than 1,400 awards for quality, innovation, and management. The American Institute of Architects has recognized SOM twice with its highest honor, the Architecture Firm Award—in 1962 and again in 1996. In its May 2010 issue, Architect Magazine named SOM the #1 architectural firm in its Architect 50 list. In forming its rankings, the magazine placed a premium on “ecological commitment and design quality”. The firm maintains offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Brussels, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.