With an objective to honour the achievements of superior design and architecture around the globe, the 6th annual Hospitality Design Award was held at the historic Husdson Theatre, Millennium Broadway Hotel, New York on 9th June 2010.

Sanjay Puri Architects, one of India’s leading Architecture Design firms was recently declared the winner at the award ceremony. Sanjay Puri Architects was the sole Indian firm amongst the 17 winners that included well known international names such as HBA-Singapore, Wilson Associates, Los Angeles, Simeone Deary Design Group, Chicago and Rockwell Group, New York.

The Indian architecture firm received the honour in the best mid range hotel category for their project called chrome, a 63 room boutique hotel in Kolkata. Facing a busy arterial road of the body and flanked by commercial building on either side with a residential building at the rear, this small plot for a business hotel had a height limitation of 24 m. The hotel comprises of eight levels with public spaces occupying the first three levels and four levels of rooms above and a  rooftop lounge bar on the top-most floor.

This hotel is designed in a manner that allows a series of experiences to its visitors. The juxtaposition of angular punctuated volumes that form the building, the sculpted free flowing entrance lobby, the angular abstracted volumes of the restaurant, the variety of rooms and the fluid spaces of the bar each are created with their own distinct identity and experience.

Each space is a sculpted volume with forms, colours, textures, materials and lighting being brought together in a cohesive way to create an individual experience. These spaces create a hotel that is not just a place to stay in temporarily, but a series of spaces that are explorative in the experiences they evoke.

The building in lieu of its restricted surroundings, size and height limitations yet creates a strong presence within the area using every space within to advantage in a clearly functional manner, while creating the illusion of being a much larger series of spaces internally.

Source: The Inside track