Kohn Pedersen Fox designs Park Hyatt Suzhou

Kohn Pedersen Fox has joined forces with interiors firm HBA to design Park Hyatt Suzhou, which opened its doors near freshwater Jinji Lake earlier this year. Spanning a total of 305,000ft², the property comprises 179 guestrooms and suites, 2,400m² of meeting and event space, a pool, fitness centre and a spa with six treatment rooms.

Inspired by the world-renowned Suzhou Gardens, both the façade and the interior of the project connect guests to the natural surroundings. The filigree screens seen in the gardens were abstracted and reinterpreted into a simplified, ornamental screen on the buildings’ façade; this intricacy contrasts with the simpler, primarily terracotta cladding, conceived as a reference to the traditional Suzhou plasterwork that wraps many of the city’s buildings. With stepped massing and private terraces, each with uninterrupted views, the rooms are designed to provide an experience more akin to that of an intimate residential home than a hotel.

“Our concept for the Park Hyatt Suzhou was inspired by the client’s vision to create a contemporary estate organized around intimate gardens,” says Josh Chaiken, Design Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox. “The architecture is modulated into a series of discrete boxes to break down the scale and support this sense of intimacy.”

Managing Principal Inkai Mu adds: “The Park Hyatt Suzhou is the fourth hotel we have completed for the brand in China, representing half of their locations in the country. This is the first low-rise Park Hyatt appropriately embracing the nearby lake and with its own series of gardens paying homage to the city of Suzhou.”

Designed primarily from the inside-out, Park Hyatt Suzhou focuses on hotel amenity and premium interior spaces. The hotel plan was crafted around a series of internal and external garden courts to maintain guests’ connection with nature and its role in Suzhou’s cultural context.

The property joins KPF’s portfolio of award-winning projects for the brand, including the Park Hyatt Shanghai, located in the upper floors of the KPF-designed Shanghai World Financial Centre, and the Park Hyatt Shenzhen, a five-star hotel in the Ping An Finance Centre South Tower at the heart of the Futian business district.

Other notable hospitality projects by KPF include Rosewood Bangkok, a 133-key luxury hotel in the city’s central business district; Rosewood Hong Kong, which anchors the newly redeveloped Victoria Dockside; and Mandarin Oriental Wangfujing, which overlook’s Beijing’s Forbidden City. Slated for completion in 2021, The Royal Atlantis Resort and Residences in Dubai will offer unprecedented spaces that elevate the guest experience in bold new ways.