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Precast units give interesting rhythms to the design of the Knights Hotel, Knightsbridge
will disappear from the scene, as in- deed they already have done in the latest hotels.
All this is mainly because the em- phasis in the future will be on the short-term visitor, probably travelling as one of a large party. Most of the design problems will have to do with movement, and a major help in easing this will be the universal adoption of credit card facilities, coupled with computerised systems of reservation and room service control.
don, for example, hotel operators have found that balconies are difficult to maintain and are seldom used: they are absent from almost all recent de- signs.
Everywhere self-cleaning materials are an essential aid to cutting renova tion costs. Strictures of this kind tend to reduce a building to flat and fea- tureless facades, so we now aim to in- troduce some modelling troduce some modelling into large blocks by the use of precast units de- signed to give interesting rhythms to the building.
Hotels of the same class through- out the world already begin to look It is difficult to envisage any major much alike externally. The visual simi- changes in the use of structural or larity is governed less by any conscious cladding materials in the next 21 acceptance of an international style years, though there may be some new than by the structural methods and developments of lesser importance in materials that are available to an archi- some of the interior appointments. Al- tect who is circumscribed by stringent ready there are hotels under develop economics.
ment where bathroom units are being There are other influences. In Lon- moulded in plastics as a single unit:
this kind of system is of more interest for the low-cost project than the de luxe operation, where traditional luxury materials, such as marble and stainless steel, are still favoured by most developers.
To help in the running of the ho- tels of the future we can expect more sophisticated electronic equipment to be adopted: for example in the control of lighting, individual room heating, audio systems, telecommunications, room monitoring, accounting, manage- ment information, and data process- ing. The architect has to take note of all these possibilities.
Hotels are not designed for a short life. Projects now life. Projects now on the drawing board will still be first-line operations in 1991. So the architect has to take a long-range view, and also needs far- sighted advice from the management team.
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Far East BUILDER, May 1971
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