There is a new typology of building seldom explored in the current architectural debate: massive, purpose-specific infrastructural buildings that belong to a bygone political era and have now become obsolete.
 
Rather than propose yet another mixed-use development (the stock response to this problem of modern archaeology), the unit’s agenda was to investigate different ways of appropriating this forgotten building type and proposing a single intervention – a hotel – following a critical reassessment of the site. Each student's hotel brief was the result of an abstract exploration through the medium of a film trailer – a trailer for a hotel that doesn't exist. This exercise took inspiration from Francesco Vezzoli’s parody trailer, ‘Caligula’, and culminated in a two-minute trailer integrating the work of all 14 students.
 
After a delicious and intimidating unit trip to Las Vegas, the students applied their abstracts to the given site: the former Royal Mail sorting office in New Oxford Street, London. Through plastic and contextual design processes the students started to translate their concepts into architectural narratives in the form of large-scale models.
 
The result of this year’s work is an assemblage proposal, to be contrasted with the Madrid Hotel Puerta America typology, where students' proposals are the result of their intentions clashing with both the existing context and other students' designs. For this reason no single project is selected here. Instead, each student's hotel is represented with her/his first image and final design, leaving open the fundamental ontological question of what a contemporary hotel is.
 

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