g hotel

Gorgous, glaring & glamorous !!! Galway City’s groovy g hotel on Ireland’s West coast.

This 103 bedroom hotel, is the flagship property of Monogram Hotels, Ireland’s newest niche brand of luxury hotels. Douglas Wallace collaborated with design director, Philip Treacy, to create a five-star hotel interior unlike anything seen before in Ireland.

Gerry’s Bar is all geometric minimalism in red, white and black – designed for late-night posing, people watching and smooching. Red crystals in the marble floor and mirror-panelled walls contribute a dash of glamour to the mix.

Star Wars-Inspired Marine Research Facility

Is it out of space? No, it’s a Mellard pod on the futuristic aquatic research station!

Star Wars inspiration and biomimicry combine for the design of the Facility at Sea, a sustainable marine research platform and feat of offshore building engineering. The concept came together in an architecture studio at the University of Texas, which evaluated potential applications of the soaring structural designs of Star Wars for a marine research facility. Designer Jason Mellard took further inspiration from the engineering acumen of Santiago Calatrava and present-day offshore oil platforms.

The Poseidon Undersea Hotel

For a virtual tour of the hotel, see the video at the bottom of the page.

Unlike the Jules Undersea Lodge — the only undersea hotel now in existence, located off the coast of Key Largo, Fla. — guests at the Poseidon won’t need to put on a wet suit and dive to their accommodations. They also won’t need to worry about changing pressure levels since the accommodations will be maintained at above-surface pressure. Instead, they can glide to their $1,500-a-night underwater abodes by escalator.

Each room will feature fortified, transparent acrylic walls that look out onto coral gardens. There will be controls in each room that guests can use to adjust the lighting of the underwater worlds outside their windows and to release food for fish swimming just outside. The rooms will also feature individual Jacuzzis for those who may be inspired by their surroundings to get wet.

Icehotel – A hotel built of ice and snow

ICEHOTEL is situated in the village Jukkasjärvi, 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden. The heart and backbone is the River Torne flowing freely through the unspoilt wilderness. Covered with a meter thick ice layer winter time the river is the source of all our art, architecture and design. The pure water and the steady movement of the river creates the clearest ice possible.

Every year new suites and new art work is created by carefully selected artist. As part of an ongoing endeavor to enhance the overall experience of visiting ICEHOTEL, a collaborative project was initiated this year with the Lighting Laboratory at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, in which KTH students contributed to the planning and integration of various lighting installations in and around ICEHOTEL. Including assistance from Svefi Academy, 13 participants from eight countries took part in the program. Working in groups, the designers created a master plan that would take visitors on a “journey from the Earth’s core to the space.” The project was supported by advisors Gerhard Rehm, Willem van der Sluis and Christian Dahlberg.

As soon as winter begins, a team of snow builders, architects, designers and artists from all over the world gather in the little town of Jukkasjärvi far north of the Arctic Circle. Under the direction of the ICEHOTEL Art & Design Group, they create each year’s version of ICEHOTEL.

Marbella, Spain: 1st Genuine American Diner Project

Our friends at Yummy Koncept have announced their latest project. What’s going to be the first genuine 50′s Diner in Marbella is under construction.

Laurent Sabouret from Yummy Koncept explains: ” I have lived in San Francisco and Chicago for 3 years and since I was a little boy I always been a fan of the typical Stainless Steel diners. When I was in the States, I was a regular customer of all the diners that would count the city and I would always pay attention to all the details. I have accumulated numerous pictures and documentation about American Diner’s and have a particular interest for the 50′s one. When our client explained he wanted a genuine American Diner, I had no doubt that we were the right people for the job”. Laurent took its inspiration from various existing diner such as “Mel’s Drive In“, “Fog City Diner” and “Johnny Rockets“.

Sagrada Familia

The Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família (Catalan, “Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family”), often simply called the Sagrada Família, is a massive Roman Catholic church under construction in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Construction began in 1882 and continues to this day.

Originally designed by Antoni Gaudí (1852 – 1926), who worked on the project for over 40 years, devoting the last 15 years of his life entirely to the endeavor, the project is scheduled to be completed in 2026. On the subject of the extremely long construction period, Gaudí is said to have remarked, “My client is not in a hurry.” After Gaudí’s death in 1926, work continued under the direction of Domènech Sugranyes until interrupted by the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Designed by North American architect Frank Gehry, the Guggenheim has helped transform Bilbao from a dark industrial town into a developing modern city.

The gallery was constructed in titanium and limestone blocks, a combination of interconnecting shapes with curved glass walls which protect the art from heat and radiation damage. Arriving from the airport, the road sweeps around to confront the spectator with the dynamic presence of the building, the titanium refecting both the old and new elements of the city. Inside, there are 11,000 square metres of exhibition space in 19 galleries, providing the space and light to appreciate the artworks without overwhelming the viewer.

The Alhambra – Granada – Spain

On a hill overlooking Granada, the Alhambra—a sprawling palace-citadel that comprised royal residential quarters, court complexes flanked by official chambers, a bath, and a mosque—was begun in the thirteenth century by Ibn al-Ahmar, founder of the Nasrid dynasty, and was continued by his successors in the fourteenth century. Its most celebrated portions—a series of courtyards surrounded by rooms—present a varied repetoire of Moorish arched, columnar, and domical forms. The romantic imagination of centuries of visitors has been captivated by the special combination of the slender columnar arcades, fountains, and light-reflecting water basins found in those courtyards—the Lion Court in particular; this combination is understood from inscriptions to be a physical realization of descriptions of Paradise in Islamic poetry.