This project seeks to investigate a hybrid type between the capsule and boutique hotel, aimed at business travelers. This will be achieved by extracting qualities of each typology through systematic analysis to establish an environment that responds to a niche user. Identifying key characteristics through a number of precedents provides the foundation for the investigation and the programming criteria for spatial development. Owing to the technological revolution, there is an increasing need to translate the multitude of computer-driven interfaces to human-centred interaction. Computers, portable music players, mobile phones and wireless connections have fundamentally impacted social dynamisms fostering artificial identities and negating traditional notions of physical distance. Forever remaining plugged-in has led to the dematerialization of built space, the denial to the user of their sensorial abilities, the rendering of one space just the same as another. By re-awakening the senses through interactive encounters, a sense of familiarity, personal experience, and the creation of memory is lent to individual environments. In this sense, the interior designer is no longer merely a form giver, but is rather placed in the position of a fundamental interpreter. Focusing on the psychological impacts of place and spatial identity, this exploration will take advantage of the possibilities provided by contemporary technologies. Translating these interfaces to perform in response to body movements and presence within spaces creates a user centered model. In effect, this design approach assists the user in recognizing their existing location establishing an association between body movement and interior surroundings.

This project seeks to investigate a hybrid type between the capsule and boutique hotel, aimed at business travelers. This will be achieved by extracting qualities of each typology through systematic analysis to establish an environment that responds to a niche user. Identifying key characteristics through a number of precedents provides the foundation for the investigation and the programming criteria for spatial development. Owing to the technological revolution, there is an increasing need to translate the multitude of computer-driven interfaces to human-centred interaction. Computers, portable music players, mobile phones and wireless connections have fundamentally impacted social dynamisms fostering artificial identities and negating traditional notions of physical distance. Forever remaining plugged-in has led to the dematerialization of built space, the denial to the user of their sensorial abilities, the rendering of one space just the same as another. By re-awakening the senses through interactive encounters, a sense of familiarity, personal experience, and the creation of memory is lent to individual environments. In this sense, the interior designer is no longer merely a form giver, but is rather placed in the position of a fundamental interpreter. Focusing on the psychological impacts of place and spatial identity, this exploration will take advantage of the possibilities provided by contemporary technologies. Translating these interfaces to perform in response to body movements and presence within spaces creates a user centered model. In effect, this design approach assists the user in recognizing their existing location establishing an association between body movement and interior surroundings.

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Infusion is a gallery hotel that seeks to promote and encourage interaction between the local people of the community and traveling guests. More than just a hotel for rest and relaxation, Infusion will display a public gallery making art the universal language for their guests and the locals.

This discourse explores appropriate hotel design in Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa. The hotel design will seek to provide accommodation that is both fashionable and affordable whilst taking cognisance of international trends towards boutique and specialist hotels. Further it will endeavour to create a local hotel with a variety of room layouts into a multi star graded hotel. This study is also an investigation into hotel systems to develop a model based on an open building approach, which is useful in accommodating a variety of uses and facilities that could adapt to changing trends. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Architecture / unrestricted

People’s authentic sense of place is being overshadowed by less authentic experiences referred to as placelessness. Consequently, a demand for experiential interior environments has surfaced. Experiential environmental and place attachment theories suggested that the relationships between self, others, and the environment are what encourage users in creating meaningful authentic experiences. This qualitative study explored the roles of the experiential interior architectural features in affording users of hospitality environments higher-level needs, such as meanings of place. For the case study, ten participants stayed at a hotel for two nights. Participants were given a guided list of ten facets of an experience, which was insidiously structured by both experiential environmental and place attachment theories. The participants used photographs to document each of the facets on the guided list. The photos were then used during the photo elicitation interviews, which evoked additional qualitative information. Participants identified specific interior architectural features and described them using the themes associated to place attachment theories. The findings revealed that the interior architectural features might enrich the meanings a person associates with a given place. Possibly affording users higher-level needs. As a result, if an experiential interior environment allows users to foster relationships between self, others, and the physical environment, they may experience more authentic experiences and give more meanings to a place.