For the first time in his half-century practice, Richard Mayer works for Mexico: his two projects there are already underway. The first, by 2013, should open a hotel as part of the multifunctional complex Liberty Plaza in Mexico City. Compositionally, the "plaza" represents three 15-storey "plate buildings" facing the majestic landscape of the Mexico City valley with the surrounding mountains and volcanoes. Two of them occupy offices with a standard set of infrastructure facilities (restaurants, shops, etc.). The towers are interconnected by a glass "bridge" of the conference hall on the 2nd floor. The third, L-shaped tower is the 132-room W Santa Fe hotel, with a swimming pool, spa and rooftop bar. The lower level houses a salon, another bar, two restaurants, a nightclub and a small conference room. All these zones are "brought together" by the main staircase, which is the sculptural center of the multi-storey lobby.
The architecture of the complex is "made" with the laconicism characteristic of Mayer. Only glass and white aluminum panels are used in the decoration of the facades, while each of the three towers slightly differs from the others in the facade pattern and proportions of the volume. The "grid" of the building frame is easy to read behind the transparent facades-screens. Liberty Plaza is reminiscent of other projects by Mayer, such as the trio of condominiums on Perry Street in New York.
Liberty Plaza will be one of the first buildings in Mexico City to be LEED-certified, with collected rainwater used to irrigate lawns, for example.
Another hotel, located in the Riviera Maya resort, not far from the city of Cancun, just as accurately corresponds to the "pure style" of Mayer, only its composition develops horizontally, not upward. The fact is that it is located in a protected natural zone: out of 183 hectares of land, only 3.8 were allowed to build up and plant trees. The hotel complex is widely "spread" over the territory and therefore is almost invisible: in the center - a T-shaped composition of two squat residential buildings; on the coast - a small building of a beach club, not far from it - a sea pool and a restaurant; at the back of the site there is a spa building, a nightclub and a bar. From above, this hotel resembles a Suprematist composition: the strict geometry of the buildings balances the intricate ligature of paths winding along the mangrove grove from one building to another.
This hotel will also be white, only Meyer uses concrete and plaster as a material here, since the metal can rust from the ocean's salty air. Residential buildings facing the pool are 3-storey blocks with extensive terraces and green roofs. On the reverse side of the main building there is a sculptural volume of the conference hall, and the facade itself is covered with a wall-screen in which the main entrance to the hotel is "cut out".
The body of the beach club has a more plastic shape, curved towards the ocean. The east wing houses a two-story restaurant, while the west wing houses the administration, games room and gym. There, on the shore, near the pier, there is another restaurant with a sea pool, the roof of which resembles the completion of the Sydney Opera: it is also inspired by the image of a sail. A little deeper is the spa building - a geometric three-story building with a huge glass hall at its full height, as well as a half-hidden nightclub with a round bar in the center.
The construction of the W Retreat Kanai is scheduled to be completed by 2014.
N. K.
