Danish Plug-In Concept Transforms Empty Office Buildings Into Hotels
The economic downturn has resulted in a real estate crisis in Midtown Manhattan. The Copenhagen-based architects of PINKCLOUD consider their Pop-Up Hotel to be a feasible concept for transforming empty office spaces into hospitality spaces.
Manhattan’s Midtown is facing high office vacancies, plummeting rents, and a flight of tenants to New Jersey. The combination of an outdated building stock, the shitty economic situation, and a lack of services and amenities in the neighborhood have turned Manhattan into an area of decline. At the same time tourism in New York keeps growing. Flexibilization of space may be a good idea as it helps urban areas adapt to new situations. PINKCLOUD’s Pop-Up Hotel is designed in such a way that it can be easily ‘plugged’ into vacant office buildings.
“The Pop-Up Hotel is designed to be a means of urban revitalization, an economic catalyst, as well as an active community partner. We strongly believe the Pop-Up Hotel to be a transformative experience for both the building and more importantly, the hotel guests.”
The architects have designed the Pop-Up Hotel in such a way that different modules of the system can be ordered like meals on a restaurant menu. This enables clients to create the hotel they want, varying from a hang-out for backpackers to luxury suites. Every part of the Pop-Up Hotel can be easily packed and shipped on site using special containers. Each of these ‘boxes’ is identified with a unique RFID tag that allows for easy tracking and set-up.
We’re not the only people who are curious to see this idea being brought into practice — the Pop-Up Hotel recently won the first prize in Radical Innovations in Hospitality, a competition that invited designers to come up with ideas for the next big hotel concept.
