Rocco Design Architects Top Project | Best Interior Designers

The Company:

Rocco Design Architects is a Chinese architectural practice based in Hong Kong. Working in a region with disparate cultural and physical landscapes, and where values from diverging times and places converge, Rocco Design’s work is grounded in the belief that architecture is the embodiment of culture – embracing and reinterpreting the past, as well as addressing modernity – and the requirements of contemporary living.

Rocco Design’s works are marked by their sensitivity and sensibility. While always eager to explore and innovate, they are nonetheless aware that architecture, rather than just an art, is ultimately the art of problem-solving.

Rocco Design currently has six Directors and about 170 staff with offices in Hong Kong and mainland China. Their works have been consistently awarded both locally and overseas, including a First Prize Award for the L’Opéra de la Bastille international competition in 1983, ARCASIA Gold Medals in 1994 and 2003, the Chicago Athenaeum Architectural Awards in 2006, 2011 and 2013, the Kenneth F. Brown Award in 2007, and the World Architecture Festival category winner in 2011.

The firm has exhibited four times in the Venice Biennale over the last decade, in 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2012.

The Project – The W Guangzhou Hotel & Residences

The W Guangzhou Hotel & Residences complex is located along the central axis of the new CBD of Guangzhou. To the west of the complex locates the district’s main boulevard – Xiancun Road; and on the other side lies the residential building which is part and parcel of the same urban block. With a typical city block with an inner landscaped courtyard, the W Guangzhou Hotel & Residences provides the interface between the tranquil courtyard and the main boulevard.

The Hotel and Residences are geometrically ‘stitched’ together to form an integrated building design, giving the development its distinctive shape and character. The resulting building form allows free passages of air, light, and views through the intertwining spaces at the integrated junction, but also revealing the buildings’ distinct individual functions and responses to the differing site contexts. In essence, the design maintains the integration and continuity of the city as a whole, opens up the inner courtyard with a “Window to The City”.

The intervening interior spatial configuration of the complex with its expressively rich composition classifies itself as an unconventional grandeur; fabricating a gracious, welcoming, and surprising ambience. The glass boxes and the exposed glass fins that animate the western façade create another layer of intricacy to become a city’s iconic sight at night.