Morpheus by Zaha Hadid Architects, a new flagship hotel for the City of Dreams resort in Macau, opens

Morpheus
Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand

Asia’s most popular entertainment destination, Macau welcomed more than 32 million tourists in 2017, with visitor numbers increasing every year. Located in Cotai, Macau, City of Dreams is a leading integrated resort including casino, two theatres, shopping district, 20 restaurants and four hotels.

Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand

Informed by the fluid forms within China’s rich traditions of jade carving, the Morpheus’ design combines dramatic public spaces and generous guest rooms with innovative engineering and formal cohesion. Conceived as a vertical extrusion of its rectangular footprint, a series of voids is carved through its centre to create an urban window connecting the hotel’s interior communal spaces with the city and generating the sculptural forms that define the hotel’s public spaces.

Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand

Linked at ground level with the surrounding three-storey podium of the City of Dreams resort, the Morpheus houses 770 guest rooms, suites and sky villas, and includes civic spaces, meeting and event facilities, gaming rooms, lobby atrium, restaurants, spa and rooftop pool, as well as extensive back-of-house areas and ancillary facilities.

Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand

At that time, foundations were already in place of a condominium tower that did not progress. ZHA designed the Morpheus as a simple extrusion of the existing abandoned foundations; using this rectangular footprint to define a 40-storey building of two internal vertical circulation cores connected at podium and roof levels where the many guest amenities were required.

Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand

This extrusion generated a monolithic block making best use its development envelope that is restricted to a 160m height by local planning codes. This block was then ‘carved’ with voids. The underlying diagram of the hotel’s design is a pair of towers connected at ground and roof levels.

Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand

The central atrium in-between these towers runs the height of the hotel and is traversed by external voids that connect the north and south facades. These voids create the urban window that links the hotel’s interior communal spaces with the city. Three horizontal vortices generate the voids through the building and define the hotel’s dramatic internal public spaces; creating unique corner suites with spectacular views of both the atrium and the city.

Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand

This arrangement maximises the number of hotel rooms with external views and guarantees an equal room distribution on either side of the building. In-between the free-form voids that traverse the atrium, a series of bridges create unique spaces for the hotel’s restaurants, bars and guest lounges by renowned chefs including Alain Ducasse and Pierre Hermé.

Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand

The atrium’s twelve glass elevators provide guests with remarkable views of the hotel’s interior and exterior as they travel between the voids of the building. As one of the world’s leading hotels, the Morpheus’ interior spaces necessitated a high degree of adaptability to accommodate the many varying requirements of its guest amenities. The building’s exoskeleton optimizes the interiors by creating spaces that are uninterrupted by supporting walls or columns.

Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand

The world’s first free-form high-rise exoskeleton, its rich pattern of structural members at lower levels progresses upwards to a less dense grid of lighter members at its summit. Morpheus draws on a ZHA’s 40 years of research into the integration of interior and exterior, civic and private, solid and void, Cartesian and Einsteinian. Space is woven within structure to tie disparate programmes together and constantly make connections.

Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand

Viviana Muscettola, ZHA’s project director explains, “the comprehensive parametric model combined all of the hotel’s aesthetic, structural and fabrication requirements and will radically change how our built environment is planned and constructed.” Macau’s buildings have previously referenced architecture styles from around the world. Morpheus has evolved from its unique environment and site conditions as a new architecture expressly of this city. Source by Zaha Hadid Architects.

Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand
  • Location: Macau, China
  • Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA)
  • Design: Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher
  • ZHA Project directors: Viviana Muscettola, Michele Pasca di Magliano
  • ZHA Facade director: Paolo Matteuzzi
  • ZHA Project architects: Michele Salvi, Bianca Cheung, Maria Loreto Flores, Clara Martins
  • ZHA Project Team: Miron Mutyaba, Milind Khade, Pierandrea Angius, Massimo Napoleoni, Stefano Iacopini, Davide Del Giudice, Luciano Letteriello, Luis Migue Samanez, Cyril Manyara, Alvin Triestanto, Muhammed Shameel, Goswin Rothenthal, Santiago Fernandez-Achury, Vahid Eshraghi, Melika Aljukic
  • ZHA Interior Team: Daniel Fiser, Thomas Sonder, Daniel Coley, Yooyeon Noh, Jinqi Huang, Mirta Bilos, Alexander Kuroda, Gaganjit Singh, Marina Martinez, Shajay Bhooshan, Henry Louth, Filippo Nassetti, David Reeves, Marko Gligorov, Neil Ridgen, Milica Pihler-Mirjanic, Grace Chung, Mario Mattia, Mariagrazia Lanza
  • ZHA Concept Team: Viviana Muscettola, Tiago Correia, Clara Martins, Maria Loreto Flores, Victor Orive, Danilo Arsic, Ines Fontoura, Fabiano Costinanza, Rafael Gonzalez, Muhammed Shameel
  • Executive architect: Leigh & Orange, Hong Kong
  • Local architect: CAA City Planning & Engineering Consultants, Macau
  • Structural engineering: Buro Happold International, London/Hong Kong
  • M&E engineering: J. Roger Preston
  • Facade engineering: Buro Happold International, Hong Kong
  • Third party reviewer: Rolf Jensen & Associates
  • Quantity surveyor: WT Partnership, Hong Kong
  • Lighting design: Isometrix, London/Hong Kong
  • Fire engineering: Arup, Hong Kong
  • Acoustic consultant: Shen Milson & Wilke, Hong Kong
  • Traffic engineer: MVA Hong Kong
  • Client: Melco Resorts & Entertainment
  • Total GFA: 147,860m2
  • Year: 2018
  • Photographs: Virgile Simon Bertrand, Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects
Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand
Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand
Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand
Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand
Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand
Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand
Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand
Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand
Morpheus
Photo © Virgile Simon Bertrand
Morpheus
Site Plan
Morpheus
Ground Floor Plan
Morpheus
Atrium Floor Plan
Morpheus
Roof Floor Plan
Morpheus
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Morpheus
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