Stonehill & Taylor Architects Thinks Midcentury Modern for TWA Hotel Guest Rooms
Six restaurants, eight bars, and a 10,000-square-foot rooftop observation deck with pool. Although many guests staying at the TWA Hotel will likely be flying to or from distant points, they may opt to stay an extra night to enjoy the environs. In the rooms themselves, they’ll be able to experience a journey of a different sort: time travel, with the clock dialed back to 1962. Stonehill & Taylor Architects, which is responsible for the hotel’s 150,000-square-foot interiors, made sure not to take things too far, however. “It’s a guest room, not a museum piece,” Stonehill Taylor principal Michael Suomi says, ensuring each would be not only hospitality-level durable but also meet the needs of the 21st-century traveler.
In most of the 512 rooms, beds will face floor-
to-ceiling windows overlooking either the lobby structure or the runways. Remote-controlled blackout shades will keep light out no matter what time guests check in. Thanks to windows made from 4½-inch-thick glass, billed as the second thickest in the world after the U.S. Embassy in London, the rooms promise to be
pin-drop quiet, too.
To best work out how a guest room would look and feel, Stonehill Taylor created a full-scale mock-up in a vacant hangar at JFK. Naturally, the team incorporated Saarinen’s own furniture, namely his Tulip side table and Womb chair, the latter upholstered, of course, in a chili pepper red wool blend.
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Project Team: Sara Duffy; Deedee Sanchez; Christopher Solek; Clive Kuo; Jenny Kim; Steven Eshleman; Maximo Cardoze; Ecem Castro; Rikki Tenenbaum: Stonehill & Taylor Architects. Hilltop Woodworking Through WSA Hospitality: Woodwork.
