"It's totally sci-fi," said Yolande Daniels, summing up the project that had the jury feeling futuristic. The Yas Hotel in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, is at the cutting edge of both form and technology, with a weblike shade structure that cloaks the hotel's two 10-story elliptical-shaped towers. The 500-room, 900,000-square-foot hotel straddles the Yas Marina Circuit Formula One race track, its two towers knit together by a steel bridge. The team at Asymptote Architecture designed the exterior steel-and-glass latticework, which it calls a gridshell, to mirror and capture the speed, streamlined form, and dynamic energy of Formula One racing. Inside the lobby, the expertly detailed all-white hotel resembles at once an ocean liner and an icy glacial formation.
展开▼
