Stays at hotel and resort properties around the world are discussed in articles with photographs here at The Gate with the main purpose of giving you information to reach a decision about whether or not you should stay at them if you find yourself in the corners of the planet where they are located — but imagine six hotel properties which were planned but never realized.
6 Amazing Hotels Which Were Never Built — and One Real Underwater Residence Just Announced
Although a pen and paper are all that are needed to take an idea from an innovative mind to create remarkable architecture, bringing these ideas to life as buildings which you can visit requires a significant amount of money and effort.
While some architects have constructed some of the most ambitious hotel properties which the world has ever seen — and some of them were originally constructed with other purposes such as prisons , while four years ago at $67,000 per night, this may have been the most expensive hotel room in the world — others were only left with little more than a drawing. Checking into these unbuilt hotel properties will sadly never be possible; but the fact that they remain on paper means that their ideas have never been forgotten.
Using a series of new renderings, this article from Expedia brings to life as to what the six amazingly imaginary hotel properties would look like if plans to construct them had actually been fulfilled.
I have been given express written permission to use the images and the verbatim text from the aforementioned article in this article. Typically — in an article such as this one — I would add brief notes; but I am not knowledgeable enough about the hotel properties to add any value to the information which is already here.
1. Full Moon Hotel — Baku, Azerbaijan
Work on the Full Moon Hotel has quietly come to a stop, so that Azerbaijan’s own ‘Death Star’ (as it has been nicknamed) will not be blasting rogue planets out of existence any time soon. The Full Moon would have resembled Darth Vader’s planet-sized military complex from one angle, and London’s Gherkin from another, but space cadets and luxury hotel seekers will have to put their fantasies on hold for the time being.
2. The Fourth Grace — Liverpool, England
Will Alsop’s extraordinary design beat drawings from Norman Foster and Edward Cullinan for a prestigious spot next to Liverpool’s famous three waterfront ‘Graces.’ While doubters claimed it was the ugliest hotel design of the bunch, others saw an ethereal cloud or diamond in Alsop’s stilt-bound structure. The project fell apart in 2004 due to financial difficulties, and Alsop sadly passed away earlier this year.
3. The Hotel Commonwealth — New York, United States of America
The Commonwealth was to have been the largest hotel in the world, welcoming guests to 2,500 rooms on a plot that took up an entire block on Broadway. “Through its 28 stories,” the publicity read, this proposed hotel would “rise 400 feet in the air in graceful terraces… the flowering plants and shrubs upon each terrace giving the monster hostelry an unusual beauty of architecture, rivaled only by the ancient Hanging Gardens of Babylon.” Despite Utopian intentions, the project ended up mired in legal and financial woes and was finally called off in 1925.
4. Rogers Lacy Hotel — Dallas, United States of America
Oil millionaire Rogers Lacy commissioned legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright to build a real gem, and Wright was customarily bombastic with his ideas: he claimed his Shard-like skyscraper hotel would “glisten in the night” and argued that it should be named the Lone Star. But Wright dreamt too big, and the project stalled even before Lacy’s premature death. Wright later recycled some of his unused ideas for the Price Tower in Bartlesville.
5. Xanadu Hotel — Las Vegas, United States of America
Planned to be a 2,000-room Aztec-style pyramid hotel with a 20-story atrium and flaming water feature, the Xanadu would have been an eye-catcher even among the outrageous facades of Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevard. Unfortunately, a dispute arose over sewer line installations and the project was flushed. The good news is that there are still plenty of Las Vegas hotels with architectural features that surpass expectations.
6. Lunar Hilton Hotel — The Moon, Space
Why build a Death Star when you can have the moon? Barron Hilton was inspired by the buzz of the space race to create a fleet of ‘Orbiter Hilton’ satellite hotels, with a flagship Hilton Hotel under the surface of the moon. Staying in luxury rooms built from lunar soil, the guest’s cuisine, at least, would be a little more mundane: freeze-dried steaks shipped from Earth and warmed up in a “nuclear-reactor kitchen.” Although Hilton’s big ideas sparked a short-lived space-hotel race, the cost per head would have put room prices out of the reach of mortal Earthlings, and the designs were put back in the drawer… for now.
Summary
Some people may agree that the aforementioned hotel properties are six of the coolest ones in the world which did not get past the drawing board…
…but four new exclusive and customizable experiences have been recently revealed by Hilton at THE MURAKA at Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, which is a luxury resort property situated on pristine Rangali Island — complete with an undersea residence set to debut this month. “THE MURAKA offers a transformative journey in one of the world’s most breathtaking natural environments as guests are fully immersed in the wonders of the abundant marine eco-system above and below the Indian Ocean”, according to this official press release from Hilton. “While pushing the boundaries of engineering, THE MURAKA is not only defined by its physical structure, but even more so by the wholly unique offerings globally connected guests can enjoy while staying in the innovative residence.”
Ithaa is an undersea restaurant which has been in business for years at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island resort property — a photograph of the dining area of the restaurant is shown at the top of this article — but the new undersea residence promises an opportunity to sleep overnight under water, with a view of the sea life swimming all around you via curved windows as ceilings.
Fortunately, not all innovative ideas for hotel and resort properties remain abandoned on the drawing board…
Source: Conrad Maldives Rangali Island.
