Studio Exercise 3 - Technical drawings of chosen building

Stage 1 - Gathering material

I work with Hotel Unique designed by Ruy Othake. I were not able to find any floor plans but luckily I found a simple model at Google Sketchup 3dWarehouse from which I could work off. The models name was Hotel Unique by Eric Mancinelli. I estimated concrete slabs of depth 200 mm as decks. I drew these between the windows which created the six stories I read the hotel have.

To make the floor plan was more difficult because the room varies in size, some more luxurious than others. Lets have a look at the facade:

#2 Facade in daylight

We see here a total of 37x2 = 74 windows on each side (symmetric). I was able to read that there is a total of 95 guestrooms available at Hotel Unique, which means that for the rooms to have at least one windows there will have to be rooms at each of the two external facades. This is why I chose to put the hallway in the middle. The part of the external wall without windows I estimate to be the space used for circulation. Probably a staircase in one side, and a elevator in the other. The rest of the space I imagine is used for dwellings. 

Here is an example of the interior:

#1 Interior

I estimate that the rooms have two windows, where this probably varies a lot in the real building.

I watched some videos of the building to get a better impression of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRL0WLPB37E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4J6hMkE-n4

Though their main focus was just pointing out that the hotel is very unique.

Stage 2 - Section and floor plans

First part was to create a plan and section of the private, semi-private and public areas of the building.

Next step was to describe the circulation in the buildings in a section and plan drawing.

Final step was to extract the simple shapes represented in the building which in my case is very clear.

Regarding the structures it seems like a catenary arch, which is very ideal for absorbing moments because its shaped as an arch - moment curve as result of uniformly distributed load. This is not totally true because the original building is also supported by a steel structure at the bottom of the arch. If it were not supported here the concrete slabs in each side would probably have to be a lot larger and would definitely change the expression of the building. By making the bottom support transparent I think that the building has structurally created a good illusion of being carried by the 300 mm concrete slabs at each side.

Image sources:

#1: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=hotel+unique+sao+paulo&rlz=1C1ASUT_enDK485DK485&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=da&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=ksgWUs-fI835lAWHx4DYDg&biw=1745&bih=860&sei=lMgWUqWGEMb5kAXtmIBg#facrc=_&imgdii=esiCEZ4Q2om9QM%3A%3BCJqmj746erRrmM%3BesiCEZ4Q2om9QM%3A&imgrc=esiCEZ4Q2om9QM%3A%3BmHnraLqP-dIxTM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.trainperformance.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2010%252F08%252Fsao-paulo.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.trainperformance.com%252Fthe-fitness-bug%252F8-of-the-worlds-best-hotels-for-post-workout-relaxtion%252F%3B337%3B450