Hospitality Design - December 2016 - 100

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Courtesy of 21 WEST END

Google's new Daydream View VR set, made
with a soft, breathable material

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An apartment at 21 West End in New York, designed by ICRAVE,
which the firm rendered in VR as a sales tool for the building

Virtual Reality
Not just a tech fad or for gamers, virtual
reality (VR)-an industry Deloitte predicts
will have its first billion dollar year in
2016-is fast becoming an effective design
tool. "Your natural inclination is to build
the world you live in, or a world you know,
and recreate things. There's something to
learn in that. But when you understand
you can build without rules, that lends an
understanding of an experience on the far
end of experiential reality," says Lionel
Ohayon, founder of New York design firm
ICRAVE. He predicts in the next year or
so that at least half of his studio will be
working in the unreal.
He's responding to the many benefits
of using VR versus a flat plan: the ability
to add integral touchpoints such as lighting
effects and sound, or even show changes
over time (day to night, for instance); the
technology makes the process faster,
allowing designers to find mistakes and
flaws earlier on in the project; and VR can
become a marketing asset, for the client or
consumer, depending on the project. "We
expect the greatest benefits will be around
collaboration, aligning design vision and

receiving approvals from all stakeholders,"
says Roger Hill, CEO of the Gettys Group
in Chicago, who used VR during the
renovation of the nearby Lincolnshire
Marriott Resort. Plus, "you have greater
level of rigor in your design, but also a
greater level of immersion because you're
not only thinking about the physical,
but about all these other elements," says
Elizabeth Von Lehe, ICRAVE's director of
strategy and brand architecture.
ICRAVE is also experimenting with
augmented reality (AR), which Ohayon
says is up next. Layering virtual elements
in real time could affect retail experiences
(showing nutritional information on food
items, for instance), or, as in a project
ICRAVE is working on, where augmented
cues-such as a whale swimming by-
signal to people in an event line that it's
their turn to head in. Adds Ohayon: "More
and more the questions are, 'Why should
I leave home? Why should I go shopping?
What is the value of this kind of public
space that we're creating?'"
The good news is that hardware and
software options continue to get better
and more affordable, especially as more
companies jump on the trend.

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High-Tech Hotels
As hotels wrestle with how to keep up with
guests' changing technology expectations,
extreme efficiency is the name of the game at
Henn-na, the world's first robot hotel, located
in Japan at the gates of Nagasaki's Dutch citystyle theme park Huis Ten Bosch. From the
outside the 144-room hotel looks basic: Boxshaped modular components seem to have been
assembled on the spot. But upon entering guests
find robots and automated machinery at work.
"Japanese society is aging rapidly," explains
Kataro Takada, head of corporate planning
at Huis Ten Bosch. "It has led to a worrying
lack of workers in the hotel industry. If we
don't come up with solutions, the future of
the industry is at risk." He points to Hennna's automated service as a low-cost solution.
"Simplicity and an easy to understand concept
were at the heart of the design," says Takada,
who worked with a lab at the University of
Tokyo and Japanese construction company
Kajima Corporation on the property, which
makes use of cost-efficient materials such

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December 2016 hospitalitydesign.com

as cross-laminated timber and other locally
sourced elements.
All the traditional hotel aspects are present,
albeit automated. Check-in is done by one
humanoid robot (Kibo) and two dinosaurs
(Mirai and Yumeko), to which guests provide all
their details via voice recognition in a variety
of languages. Luggage can be stored in the
glass-enclosed cloakroom, retrieved by a robot

arm originally produced for car manufacturing,
and carrying bags belongs to the past-a robot
trolley takes care of that. Entering a room
doesn't require a key card or even a phone app;
instead facial recognition opens the door.
The futuristic hotel is not without its
limitations, however. "Bed making and cleaning
bathrooms are very difficult for a robot," Takada
adds. "Wet objects could destroy them."
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Hospitality Design - December 2016

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