by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

How do you … design an unconventional luxury hotel?

Summary: New York city-based Leeser Architecture has won a design competition for the Helix Hotel, a 208-room luxury centerpiece for the Zayed Bay development of office buildings, condominiums, and retail along the water in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The design features staggered floor plates that spiral upward, with the structure partially floating in the bay adjacent to the Sheik Zayed Bridge, designed by Zaha Hadid, Hon. FAIA, and currently under construction.

Leeser Architecture’s commission is the result of an invited competition held by Al Qudra Real Estate in partnership with QP International. A construction timetable for the Helix Hotel has not been determined.

A spiraling strip
The Helix Hotel design concept calls for a baroque stack of offset floors that suggests a winding street curving through a busy town. It also features views from each floor into a central void. No two rooms positioned across from each other would have exact views to the other side, and each floor shifts in width as it rises to the top floor, so public spaces vary in size. Along the upward helix are bay-view lounges, restaurants, meeting rooms, cafes, a health spa, and a rooftop pool. An outdoor running track on the fifth floor is the only location where the canted ramp stops to become a flat surface.

“We’ve done a series of spiral projects,” says Leeser Architecture Principal Thomas Leeser. “We decided it would be interesting to have a continuous floor, like the Guggenheim, that is thought of as more of a street.”

After entering from the ground floor into the reception area, guests walk up the ramp by the various amenity areas, as one would traverse a town thoroughfare. “We wanted the look to change in the different areas and push out and go in different directions,” Leeser explains. The fact that the design concept resembles a stack of dishes in a hotel kitchen sink is “a tongue-in-cheek reference,” he says.

For additional visual drama, the rooftop pool has a glass bottom that looks down onto the bay. And, in the health club, there is a lap pool that extends into a lounge. “You would be sitting in the lounge around this lap pool like you are sitting around a fish tank,“ Lesser describes. “You see your fellow guests swimming as you’re smoking your cigars. It’s meant to be provocative of these hyper-fancy environments.”

Hotel sits on the bay; cars are submerged
The design cuts away the land so the building is actually sitting in the water. Says Leeser: “When you are in the lobby in the main restaurant you would be sitting right on the water’s edge. The Emirates can be hot in the summer to the point where you don’t want to sit outside. We have a giant glass curtain to enclose the waterfront so people can still sit on the water’s edge but are indoors. Projects in the The United Arab Emirates can be a little bit extreme.”

At the entry, valets would drive clients’ cars into the car park, situated under the bay. “You drop off your Ferrari or Lamborghini and then you see the valet guys drive it into the ocean,” he notes. “That was our tease to the extreme luxury of this part of the world.”

An indoor waterfall cools and hydrates the air as it falls through the void. The curtain wall from the second floor down into the water opens when the weather is cool and closes when it is hot. Portions of the outside surface are clad in panels made of a new material called GROW, which has both photovoltaic and wind harnessing capabilities.