Lobby of Canberra’s Hotel Hotel
The Nishi building complex in Canberra, Australia houses offices, a cinema, shops, apartments and a hotel. They are spread over two very different buildings. To the east a fully-glazed office block and to the west a residential and hotel building that is one storey higher. The architects connected the two buildings through a common foyer and transformed it into a place where apartment tenants, hotel guests and office workers can gather informally. This objective also informed the choice of materials, their pre-patinated industrial aesthetic in sharp contrast with the smooth, hard interior surfaces of the building shell. Between the two ground floors a large staircase is enveloped in a “cloud” made out of reclaimed wood boards. The wood was partly salvaged from the original building and partly from local recycling workshops. Even a former basketball court floor provided some of the wood planks that are now fixed to the 1,200 steel rods that run between floor and ceiling.The staircase treads are also made out of stacks of timber slats supported by a steel substructure. The handrails are made out of uncoated steel.
