Re: Re: Echoes – Are There Any Serious Planning Guidelines ?

An interesting thread of conversation.

The Radisson Blu on Dublin’s Golden Lane is unquestionably one of the best designed hotels in the city in terms of aesthetic, choice of materials and acoustic qualities. While I agree that chaotic reverberation can be a menace in public places, it has its purpose too – as alluded to in the article above. In the case of the Radisson, the foyer is grand, uncompromisingly hard, vigorously polished, echoing, and thus stately. This instantly creates ‘buzz’, excitement and a grandiose sense of arrival. It is also relentlessly durable. However, the key point of difference with most hotels is that, as a business hotel, the foyer lounge proper is a consciously dedicated zone placed a considerable distance away from the main entrance ‘concourse’, and is the main focus of the public area of the hotel. It is warm, inviting, and lined with soft surfaces and furnishings, but equally, is strongly visually linked with the main lobby through a largely open-plan ground floor arrangement.

Moving between zones, such as between the lobby and lounge, lounge and restaurant, lounge and bar, or the conference facilities, is treated in a unifying ‘hard’ manner, but the destinations are all ‘soft’ and exceptionally well considered.

Leaving aside the very occasional foray into tack, it is a supremely accomplished hotel – surprisingly, with an immaculate modern French restaurant – that thankfully remains unknown to most locals.