- Location: New York, USA
- Program: Hotel, Restaurant
- Area: 278 m²
- Year: 2010
- Status: Realized
Continuing the concept of the Hudson Hotel to create ‘an exciting urban adventure that provides a unique experience’ SAQ proposes a stunning intervention of the Hudson Cafeteria. The former library of the American Women’s Association Clubhouse and Residence for Young Women in New York will be reinterpreted in a fresh yet delicate way.
Upon arriving you notice a mysterious reflecting black box floating over the central kitchen appearing to absorb the space around it. It reaches out to the hovering juxtaposed frames surrounding the dining room and back to the small colorful dishes being prepared inside. As the ambient light softly changes your attention turns from the kitchen to the hanging frames which are morphing with the rising mood of the space as it fills with the evening crowd. Your curiosity impels you to wonder where the room will go next as if it has tapped into some collective stream of consciousness. Tomorrow you will have breakfast in the same room but in a totally new atmosphere, glowing in the warmth of morning while you start your day.
The Hudson Hall is a meeting place not only for hotel guests. An interior concept is a tool that adapts to the mood and setting of every event. Video clips are curated from local and international artists so the installation has no start or end but is part of a continuum, projected on a layered surface of wood, canvas, and paint. The interior of Hudson Hall remains in the same organization with refreshed colors and the addition of a linear bar. The original wooden furniture’s materiality retains its former memories and sets the stage for new experiences in an intimate setting. Along the windows, the monolithic bar leads to a terrace where your mind can wander and new perspectives become apparent.
‘It is the collision of styles, ideas, and times – the ability to embrace a bit of chaos and the fearlessness to challenge the establishment – that creates energy and produces a layered and sophisticated environment. Entering such an environment enables people to feel a connection, a heightened sense of self, of time and place, of feeling alive and life itself.'[initial concept of the Hudson Hotel]