Hotel Design: Renovation

The purpose of this thesis is to design an urban hotel located in Seoul, the capital city of Korea. I used an existing hotel, named Kims, for this renovation project. The existing hotel consists of forty-eight guest rooms, one bar, one coffee shop, one restaurant and a lobby area. The coffee shop and the restaurant are placed in the same room separated by three-foot high partitions. Compared to other transient or residential hotels in Seoul and large cities in the United States. this four-story hotel with forty-eight guest rooms can be designated as a small hotel in scale. William S. Gray and Salvatore C. Liguon define hotels with less than one hundred rooms as small hotels, with regard to their size in large cities.1 Because Seoul is one of the busiest cities in Asia, as well as in the world, the owner of this hotel can expect not only an increase in the number of national guests but also in guests from abroad. The expected customer groups are business people from other areas in Korea, business people from abroad, and national and international tourists. I believe that customers will be aware of and enjoy visiting this small hotel if the hotel provides adequate advertising and a convenient and beautiful environment with distinguished decorations. Therefore, renovation is required to help improve the general qualities of the hotel and to provide advantages that small hotels possess such as coziness. Guests can feel as if they are staying home. Furthermore, the business operation is less complicated than it is in larger hotels. I intend to provide high quality facilities with easy access and unique decorations for guests and employees, and to use traditional Korean elements of decoration for this project, because I judge that the most important factor that could impress foreigners is to express my own culture to them through the design of this hotel. In addition, this design concept could evoke an attachment to the culture for natives. In the design process, I first referred to characteristics of traditional Korean house forms and furniture. They supported the design of the objects and the details that are used in this project. Then, I unified and abstracted the characteristics so that these motives could be integrated into my own design. Because one scope of this renovation is to internationalize this hotel, and the fact that I designed this project as a result of studying in the United States. I consulted Americans with Disabilities Act: law and regulations and Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations NYCRR: New York Codes, Rules, and Regulations for guidance. I approached this interior renovation project by dividing it into two main parts; space planning and design. For the space planning and circulation. I took a hotel\u27s functional organizations and principles of operation into consideration, and as I mentioned earlier. I used traditional Korean design characteristics for aesthetic motives. I intended, therefore, to make this hotel artistically wellorganized by means of combining its unique visual aspects with practicality in performing the basic role of hotels, such as management and operation. Thus, the hotel can be a more valuable asset than it was before the renovation, both for the owner as well as for expected customers