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Emotional Hotel, Manchester

Part 2 Project 2005
Tony Ip
 Manchester School of Architecture Manchester | UK
The word “extreme” was the starting point of the project. My response was the idea of “extreme emotions”. Emotions are extreme because they affect our lives daily. Humans express emotions, yet emotions themselves are actually invisible. For example, what would the emotion of lust look and feel like if it took physical form? What would it be made of?

The project was a study in seeing how a building could be generated from emotions. What would a building be like if it were to speak the language of emotion?

Research was based upon psychologist Philip Shaver’s emotion tree, an emotion classification diagram which informed a methodology to represent emotions physically.

This led to conceptual representations of particular emotions in the form of some very tangible design objects and virtual installations which experimented with texture, gesture, colour, hardness, softness, wetness, dryness, form and shape.

To explore the tactile nature of the project in detail led to further development of these ideas in the form of a small hotel. The use of these contrasting objects and environments became the means of an attempt to change the perception of the hotel to something less ‘containerised', a hotel that expresses a notion of choice, variety and the experience of diverse intimate environments which stimulate the senses.

Tony Ip

Firm, commodious and delightful -Tony Ip's project set out to explore emotional conditions and translate these through analysis and projective experiment into a personal architectural language that could inform programmatic and tectonic resolution. An apparently excessive gesture that exuberantly embraces formal, chromatic and tactile qualities is in fact theoretically disciplined and methodologically rigorous but skillfully avoids treating theory and method as anything other than the ambient crucible in which the work is forged. A work rich in future potential is also powerfully palpable in the sensuality of its projected presence. A messy vital architecture ‘out of joint' with the prevailing conventions of hair shirted phenomenology and ascetic minimalism that share similar synaesthetic origins - the 'almost nothing' is eschewed in favour of the 'almost everything' in dressing and addressing the frame that forms the clotheshorse of contemporary architecture. Profoundly cosmetic this is truly 'false work'.
2005
The project was a study in seeing how a building could be generated from emotions. What would a building be like if it were to speak the language of emotion?
Initial studies included looking at the Mr Men, who try to express emotions by form, gesture and texture. Psychologist Philip Shaver’s emotion tree classifies emotions into 2 categories: ‘basic’ and ‘specific’.
A methodology of representing ‘basic’ emotions physically was informed by the tree diagram through making objects and virtual installations. The material basis of emotions were explored.
Referring to the tree diagram once more, to represent ‘specific’ emotions physically involved modifying the representations of ‘basic’ emotions.
Experiment 1: Law court. The representations of emotions were applied to the design of a proposed law court in the law quarter of Manchester.
Experiment 2: Hotel. To explore the tactile nature of the project in detail led to further development of these ideas in the form of a small hotel on the same site.
The representations of emotions were translated into an architectural language, and informed tectonic and programmatic resolution.
The expression of the main façade was an attempt to change the perception of the hotel to something less ‘containerised', but instead a hotel that expresses a notion of choice and variety of experience.
Despite the big contrast to the surrounding buildings, acknowledgment of the context was still of prime concern.
The north side of the hotel was informed by the conceptual representations of the emotion of joy.
Like the prominent south façade, internally the spaces are informed by the representations of the emotions of hatred, excitement and lust.
The hatred component of the hotel resulted in hard and spikey walls and floors.
This part of the hotel was informed by the emotion of excitement, and resulted in expressive ‘excited’ gestures evident in the façade and the rooms.
The ‘lustful’ component resulted in horizontally emphasized, smooth and dynamic spaces. This language was expressed in the detailing of the façade.
A big ‘teddy bear’ like model, very much in the territory of the characters from the Mr Men attempted to display the material and formal qualities of the project.
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