Architecture for the world’s first guitar-shaped high-rise integrates highly detailed structural feats with luxurious interiors focused on inspiring guest experiences.
Winner- Global Future Design Awards 2020
Firm | Klai Juba Wald Architecture + Interiors
Architect/Designer | John Klai
Category | Hospitality Built
Team | John Klai, Dan Juba, John Wald, Brian Fink
Country | United States
Photographer/Copyright | ©Miguel Villegas for Klai Juba Wald Architecture + Interiors
With the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s 2007 acquisition of Hard Rock International, the renovation and expansion of their Hollywood, Florida, property presented the opportunity to reinvigorate and reimagine this worldwide brand. They once again engaged Klai Juba Wald architecture + interiors to lead a multidisciplinary collaboration of designers, engineers and specialty and technical consultants to bring to life the Tribe’s vision for an unrivaled international entertainment and gaming resort destination.
The dynamic curved shape of the iconic Guitar Hotel’s design—configured to resemble back-to-back guitars—is an engineering and construction masterpiece that rises 450 feet in height above 18 acres of waterfalls and pools. Creating the signature curves required an innovative merger of structural solutions. Programmable, integrated curtainwall LEDs enliven the guitar’s ‘sound board,’ while light cannons complete its 355-foot-long ‘strings & neck’ into the sky. This light show is are choreographed to classic rock music to create a beacon of excitement visible for miles across Southern Florida.
The 596,044 square foot Guitar Hotel is part of a $1.5-billion, 3.2-million square foot master plan, renovation and expansion. Showcasing 638 new luxury guestrooms and suites, the project brings the property’s room inventory to 1,271 with the hotel’s existing 465 guestrooms and suites. The seven-story Oasis Tower includes 168 guest rooms with exclusive swim-up suites overlooking 18 acres of magnificent pools and aquatic features such as waterfalls and a lazy river that offer guests and patrons opportunities for swimming, kayaking, paddle boarding and more.
Structural artistry frames a procession of voluminous interior spaces for gaming, spa, food & beverage, retail, entertainment forums and events. The resort’s lobby boasts The Oculus, a stunning design feature encountered from a new grand 9-lane porte-cochere. The Oculus provides a free choreographed show of cascading greenery, light, water, video and classic rock music.
The integrated resort also includes ‘Bora Bora’-style overwater cabanas, a 42,000 square foot Rock Spa & Salon, an indoor retail promenade, a private day club and nightclub, premier meeting and convention space, an elevated poker room and much more. Some 19 dining concepts and 20 bars and lounges are folded in to complement the property’s expansive 24/7 gaming areas. The new Hard Rock Live includes state-of-the-art performance technology to support A-list celebrity and Broadway performances, award shows, sporting events and nationally televised programs with capacity for 7,000 in an acoustically and unobstructed view venue. A second 7-lane porte-cochere was added to accommodate the property’s three hotels and many venues.
The Guitar Hotel’s form speaks clearly to the universal language of music and to the excitement and enthusiasm the Hard Rock brand evokes world-wide. The groundbreaking innovations of its design, engineering and construction herald a new era of possibilities for architecture. With Hard Rock being a highly visible, easily recognizable world-wide brand, perhaps this is only the first of many towers to come, bringing the potential for every model of guitar in music history to inspire new resort experiences around the world.