The coexistence of efficiency, sensibility, and operation in hospitality

The interior design project developed by AO for the Accor hotel group stems from an investigation into the limits and possibilities of economy hospitality, questioning neutrality as the dominant response within standardized systems. The result of an international competition involving five invited firms, including AO, the project is positioned within a broader reflection on the future of the brand. From this active reading of the model, architecture, interiors, and operations are conceived to coexist as an integrated system with seamless transitions. More than responding to a program, the project seeks to interpret how space can welcome, provoke, and engage, transforming everyday experience into something perceptible, sensorial, and meaningful.

How can constraints be transformed into design potential?

Phenomenology emerges as a structuring approach, guiding the project through lived experience – not only the physical dimension of space, but how it is perceived, felt, and appropriated over time. In this process, design shifts from being merely a solution to becoming a critical tool, capable of investigating, proposing, and materializing new relationships between body, use, and environment. The initial analysis identified a gap between the brand’s consistency and the absence of an experience capable of fostering a sense of belonging and acting as a differentiating factor. In response, the project moves away from conventional repetition toward the construction of an integrated journey, where each space responds not only to its function, but above all to how it is experienced. Space is conceived as a sequence of interwoven atmospheres, promoting subtle transitions between intensity and retreat, exposure and intimacy – allowing users not only to occupy the space, but to recognize it.

Authenticity structures the project as both principle and tool, understood as coherence between use, material, and perception. In a context marked by spatial homogenization, it emerges as a search for more essential and meaningful experiences. The project operates from the essential, balancing sensoriality and material responsibility. Each element is designed to reveal its nature, constructing a clear experience in which the user recognizes the space and themselves within it.

Is it possible to integrate operations and architecture?

The spatial organization begins with a precise gesture: reinterpreting the central core as an active element of the experience. Rather than a generic void, it is fragmented into programmatic units that reveal and structure the hotel’s operation. These “boxes” materialize specific uses and make space legible, allowing intuitive orientation. Circulation becomes part of the experience, connecting environments through variations in scale, light, and materiality. Visual communication is intrinsic to this logic – beyond orientation, it translates the project’s reasoning, making decisions visible and reinforcing spatial legibility, while connecting users to the experience through a continuous and intuitive reading of the environment.

On the ground floor, the project proposes a hybrid and flexible field where programs coexist and transform over time. The bar and check-in merge into a single spatial device, capable of accommodating different dynamics – from collective work during the day to a more introspective atmosphere at night. The open kitchen reveals internal processes and brings guests closer to staff, promoting transparency and valuing labor as part of the experience. By removing barriers and integrating uses, the project fosters new forms of coexistence, encouraging encounters, exchanges, and longer stays.

On the upper floors, the investigation unfolds through the transition between collective and individual spaces. Corridors, often treated as residual, are redefined as elements of orientation and experience. Through chromatic and tactile variations, the path guides users from more intense atmospheres to more introspective environments, promoting gradual deceleration. This subtle yet precise gesture reinforces the idea that space can guide sensations and behaviors.

The residential units follow a logic of synthesis: maximum efficiency with minimal complexity. The bathroom volume organizes the space and concentrates infrastructure, while integrated, multifunctional furniture resolves multiple needs within a single system. Simple and accessible materials are used consciously, not only for cost efficiency but as an aesthetic expression. Each element is designed to endure and adapt, reinforcing the idea that authenticity lies in the clarity between intention and execution.

When does method become language?

Materiality is treated as an investigative tool. Each material is analyzed through its sensorial properties and durability, integrating performance, perception, and sustainability. By mapping these relationships, AO proposes a design approach that not only idealizes but concretizes a coherent and measurable experience.

The rationalization of construction systems reinforces this logic. The use of singular elements – such as a replicable lighting system or modular furniture – demonstrates how efficiency and identity can coexist. These strategies allow the project to adapt across different contexts without losing its essence, ensuring global consistency and local flexibility.

By interweaving program, layout, and materiality, the project conceives a model that transforms constraints into design drivers. It is not simply about optimizing an existing system, but about uncovering new possibilities within it – proposing an architecture that listens, interprets, and responds sensitively to given conditions.