Abu Dhabi's Yas Viceroy hotel: it's whatever you want it to be

Poised over the Yas Marina Circuit, the Yas Viceroy hotel has become an Abu Dhabi landmark.

In just a few years, the Yas Viceroy hotel has become as much of a destination as the F1 racetrack surrounding it.

ABU DHABI // The first thing people notice about the Yas Viceroy hotel is the most difficult to describe: the grid of more than 5,000 glass panels that drapes around the building.
During the day it reflects the sky. At night thousands of LED lights play brilliant colours across its surface.
Some people say the grid is modelled after a fishing net. Others say it's a veil. It could be the skin of a snake, the facets of a gem or ripples on water.
"It stimulates your imagination," said the hotel's manager, Oliver Bruns.
The same could be said of the entire structure, positioned over the Yas Marina Circuit racetrack. Since the 499-room hotel opened in time for the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2009, the design has gathered accolades from around the world. At home it has become a landmark, the grid glowing so brightly that it is visible from the mainland.
"My first impression was, 'Wow, this is like a spaceship landed'," Mr Bruns said.
The hotel's design was conceived after Abu Dhabi put out a call for proposals in 2007, said Hani Rashid, co-founder of Asymptote Architecture, the New York firm behind the project.
The firm had five days to figure out what sort of design would make the best impression.
Mr Rashid chuckled at the thought that the grid was inspired by a fishing net. In reality it was influenced by several concepts, including the speed of Formula One racers.
"We were inspired by the movement of the Formula One car - its beauty, its poetry," Mr Rashid said.
The design team also searched for regional inspiration.
"The local things we looked at were the notion of billowing tents and local dress, and the idea that the building could act as a kind of mirage on the desert."
They based the grid's geometry on traditional Islamic architecture.
"We looked for a modern equivalent to the mathematics that produced some of the most beautiful architecture in history," Mr Rashid said. "That's what gave us both the shape of the grid shell on the building and also the quality of the diamond cuts that are all different sizes across it, that are based on a mathematical algorithm.
"I like the fact that people see many things in it," he added.
Mr Rashid's father was an abstract expressionist painter born in Egypt.
"He always showed me the kind of beauty of producing abstraction coming from very clear ideas, but allowing enough ambiguity ... that people could read their own meaning in it," said Mr Rashid, who studied architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the United States.
The 85,000 square metre hotel is a major feature on the racetrack. Two oblong buildings form a "T," linked by a bridge over the track that offers a close view for fans.
Asymptote worked hard to prove that the building could be ready by the first race in 2009, Mr Rashid said.
"At first people were taken aback," he said. "They thought it would be too expensive or difficult to build in an 18-month period."
As the design process unfolded, it was a "happy accident" that the glass grid also ended up serving as an energy-saving solar shade and "heat sink," Mr Rashid said.
"What it means is the hot air rises off and goes off the top," he said.
The interior spaces are bright, airy and curved, designed partly by the firms Richardson Sadeki and Jestico + Whiles. The palette is almost exclusively white.
"It gives a really calming feeling as well if you're here," said Ilona Welte, the hotel's marketing coordinator. "It's peaceful."
Guests wander the corridors with wide eyes, clutching cameras.
"It's very different," said Alniz Popat, from Kenya, a Dubai resident visiting on a weekend retreat. "It's not like the usual hotel."
Asymptote wanted to create something memorable, Mr Rashid said.
"We went into the region to build something and realised, there's a lot of buildings you would see anywhere in the world - Chicago, Singapore, doesn't matter," he said. "We were trying to find something that had a local flavour and could be of Abu Dhabi, but at the same time on a global stage."
Mr Bruns said, "It will never be copied anywhere."
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