April_1966 — Page 59

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DESIGN APPROACH

By Dale Keller

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building stages. This is the cheapest and best test for discovering if the rooms are really going to be com- fortable, practical and beautiful. mistake made in a model room is made only once instead of 300 or more times when the hotel is built, and the savings are enormous.

Our method is to design one of each type of bedroom and the con- tractor builds these in full scale mock-up. The model rooms always end up costing much more than the budgeted amount, but at this stage, and on such a small scale, changes can be made again and again until the room is acceptable functionally, economically and aesthetically.

Another advantage of model rooms is that they can be used as a standard of workmanship. When at a later date the contractors are brought in, they can be shown exact- ly how a wall is to be built and exactly how a chair is to be made. The rooms become the criteria and standard for the whole project.

There are many things to be con- sidered in designing hotel bedrooms. The habits of the modern traveller have changed considerably from the traveller of 30 years ago.

His lug- gage has changed in weight and style and shape; airlines have made it possible or necessary

to travel around the world with only 40 lb. of baggage. Many people are tra- velling with folding bags rather than with suitcases so closets need heavy

Far East Architect & Builder April, 1966

hooks in them for these pieces of luggage to be hung on.

Unpacking procedures have been carefully analysed. Very few peo- ple today, we find from investigation, unpack completely. Therefore lug-

Author of this article, Mr. Dale Keller, managing director of Pacific House, was born in Seattle and took his B.A. de- gree in interior design at the University

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of Washington. He was instrumental forming the Tokyo Pacific House, the cul- mination of years of living and working in Japan, where he original- ly went as student to attend Tokyo University. During his time at the University he studied all aspects of Asian design. In recent years he has worked on design projects for hotels, offices and pri- vate residences throughout Asia and has won recognition as one of the lead- ing interior designers in this part of the world.

Dale Keller

gage racks are terribly important and they must be stable and strong.

Couples travelling together usually travel with three pieces of luggage, one folding bag which has all their folding clothing in it and two suit- cases. They like to open the two suitcases on the luggage rack, hang

the folding bag up, and off they go sightseeing that is the extent of their unpacking; they do not want to spend hours unpacking and filling a lot of dirty drawers with their clothes. Therefore, it is not necessary to de- sign extensive chests and bureaux with many, many drawers in them. Instead, four or five drawers in the closet are sufficient.

Many people eat breakfast in their hotel bedrooms, so we provide two comfortable chairs and a table at a height which can be used for dining

these same chairs could be used for reading at night, although most people read in bed, according to sur- veys; nevertheless, it is very necessary to provide somewhere that guests can relax at odd moments during the day.

Basic Standards

The mechanics of the bedroom must be self-explanatory. It should not be necessary to have a chart describing how to operate various switches nor should you have to spend a long time trying to investig- ate light switches, radio controls, room buttons, service bells, etc. There should be one switch at the door which controls an important light in the room so you can see your way in clearly; the same light being extinguishable from the bedside table.

The bathroom has to be just as carefully designed as the bedroom and there is no reason to experiment with the basic standards of sanitation established in first class hotels all over the world that is, with the hot water on the left, the cold water on the right, the drain in the middle, the toilet flushes this way, the shower works that way without soaking your hair or scalding yourself, and you know just how to regulate everything.

All of these simple mechanical mat- ters are not simple if they are wrong- ly placed they are very frustrating, very irritating, but here again the full scale prototype model helps to iron out any problems.

Almost all modern hotels pro- vide washbasin counters, which give a place for cosmetic bags, shaving tackle and toilet requisites. This means that the dressing table in the bedroom is no longer so important. The height of this counter is usually higher for Europeans than it is for Asians and some compromise has to be worked out so that the average is accommodated and not just the local standards complied with.

From our studies we find that wo- men prefer to make-up in the bath- room, at this counter, where the light is good, the washbasin is there and How- everything is easily at hand. ever, a desk-vanity combination must be provided in the bedroom itself. where the light is good enough to make up or good enough to write let- ters by or be used by a man to work at.

The colours in a bedroom should be restful, but we feel that when you wake up in the morning in a hotel room you should know where you are and there should be an accent, a punctuation mark, a hint in the room

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