Slide 1
Slide 2
The Statler Hotel lobby brings together both worlds of employees & guests usually kept separate in the FOH & BOH areas, to engage as both actors and spectators simultaneously.
Slide 3
The reimagined Statler Hotel ground floor plan.
Slide 4
The Housekeeping Bar allows employees usually working in the basement to interact with guests and provides access to natural daylight.
Slide 5
Usually hidden in the back-of-house, this functional system is now a focal point in the lobby used for both employee uniforms and guest coats.
Slide 6
The wake-up call bells & lighting fixtures mediate views into the reservations office.
Slide 7
Corridors serve as amenity storage, displaying the different colored bottles that become a work of art.

REIMAGINING SERVICE

The hospitality industry traces its roots back at least 1,000 years. Constantly reimagined and reinvented, hotels have evolved to become theatre and elaborate escapist destinations. However, the back-of-house, the hierarchical roles, and the organizational structure inherent in hotel operations remains largely unchanged for over 3 centuries.

Plagued with high turnover and low job satisfaction, the service industry remains frozen in time with a design ethos that reinforces disciplinarian powers of rank and status by completely separating and hiding the employee areas from the guest areas, and pushing them below ground into the basement. My interest is to change the conventional paradigms of hotel design by breaking the boundaries between the front of the house and the back of the house. Questioning operational structures through design, I seek to create a new lodging experience with dynamic spaces that engage both the guest and the employee.

Thesis Advisor: Alexa Griffith Winton