Twenty14 Hotel project was introduced to HKS Inc. New Delhi office as closed-invite competition. The project was a vision of Twenty Fourteen Holdings group, to build a luxury 5-star hotel in one of the biggest metropolitan cities and tech-hub of India – Hyderabad. The scope of the project was to develop the concept, full-stack design, documentation, construction drawings and site coordination. To pitch for the project we had to develop a concept design as well as schematic floor plans.
I was working on the project as a designer, and was incharge of form articulation and facade design. The team consisted of four architects including me, and we had to finish the project within 2 weeks! Since the project was so fast-paced, we decided to not develop high-quality renders but rather devise a strong concept and narrative behind it. As part of the research, we studied the context of the site and designed a form that responds to the micro-climate of the site. The choice of facade design and materials is representative of Hyderabad’s iconic pearls.
We won the competition and the project was awarded to HKS. We owe the credits of our success to cohesive teamwork. Since there was very less time to pitch the project, our first thought was to divide the two options amongst four team members, and two people would pull off 1 option in 2 weeks. However, we decided to work together as a team on both the options, and every member had one key responsibility and the team would, as a whole, observe and critique each other’s domain to facilitate quick decisions and to prevent steering off in the wrong direction. This resulted in a success and the products produced at the end were very coherent and complimentary to each other.