City of Dreams Hotel Tower, Cotai, Macau by Zaha Hadid Architects

Does this new Zaha Hadid hotel look like a swimsuit?

The Pritzker laureate's latest tower appears to share some aesthetic qualities with her new swimwear range

What have these swimming costumes (below) and this hotel (above and below) got in common? They’re both by the same designer and they both appear to share some aesthetic qualities.

Zaha Hadid’s new luxury hotel in Macau, on the southern Chinese coast, is a sculptural affair with an exposed exoskeleton. Her swimwear, meanwhile, showcases “the body within a skin-tight matrix of fluid solid and void, highlighting and concealing various parts through gradients of transparencies”.

 

Zaha Hadid's swimwear range for Viviona
Zaha Hadid's swimwear range for Viviona

This range is for Viviona, a firm founded by the great Chinese American designer Vera Wang. Though these clothes would mark something of a departure for almost any other Pritzker Prize laureate, it is not so unusual for Zaha, who has already worked with Chanel and Louis Vuitton, and has put her name to shoes, bottles, yachts and bags.

 

City of Dreams Hotel Tower, Cotai, Macau by Zaha Hadid Architects
City of Dreams Hotel Tower, Cotai, Macau by Zaha Hadid Architects

Meanwhile, in Macau’s City of Dreams resort in Cotai, her hotel’s two towers are linked at the podium and roof levels with a pair of brilliant, biological-looking bridges that cross the central space.

 

Zaha Hadid's swimwear range for Viviona
Zaha Hadid's swimwear range for Viviona

“The tower’s exposed exoskeleton reinforces the dynamism of the design,” says her practice, Zaha Hadid Architects. “Expressive and powerful, this external structure optimises the interior layouts and envelopes the building.”

 

The atrium at the City of Dreams Hotel Tower, Cotai, Macau by Zaha Hadid Architects
The atrium at the City of Dreams Hotel Tower, Cotai, Macau by Zaha Hadid Architects

To be completed in 2017, it will house an amazing atrium, as well as shops, 780 hotel rooms, restaurants, top-floor ‘villas’, a ‘sky pool’, and the obligatory – Macau being a Special Administrative Region of China where gambling is permitted – gaming areas and a casino. 

 

Zaha Hadid's swimwear range for Viviona
Zaha Hadid's swimwear range for Viviona

Find out more about the swimwear range here, and the hotel here. Meanwhile, for more on contemporary building, please take a look at The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century Architecture and the Phaidon Architecture Travel Guide App. Finally, you can find out more about our exciting new Online Atlas website here.