Hotel Indigo, a brand of the InterContinental Hotels Group that was slated to break ground last fall, will do so this month at 8-10 Maiden Lane in the Financial District. The 90,000-square-foot hotel designed by Gene Kaufman Architect (GKA) has 24 stories and 190 rooms as well as a ground-floor restaurant and a rooftop bar.
The hotel’s design is an intriguing mix of old and new. The façade combines old-school masonry for the bottom third with sleek, modern glass for the upper stories. The interiors, which GKA’s interiors group designed, use muslin and other fabrics that call to mind Maiden Lane’s history as a place where 19th-century young women came to wash their clothes. A 19th-century-style curiosity, or wonder, cabinet in a small lounge off the lobby also recalls the area’s past.
In an allusion to the area’s current role as the center of international finance, with that world’s emphasis on time and its connection to wealth-building, a slim pole to the right of the building’s façade serves as a clock. As the day progresses, it slowly lights up until, at midnight, it is completely sheathed in light, which is then extinguished as the process begins anew.
Said GKA Founder and Principal Gene Kaufman, “Our goal in designing both the exterior and the interior of the Hotel Indigo was to craft a unique environment reflective of the area’s vitality, past and present.”
Gene Kaufman Architect (GKA) has a well-earned reputation in the real estate and private development arenas for high-caliber, high-impact designs that are innovative and highly efficient. For nearly 30 years, Principal Gene Kaufman and his team have cultivated strong, collaborative relationships with some of New York City’s most active developers, helping them to realize substantial bottom-line results through thoughtful design. Known as a hospitality designer par excellence, the firm also has a significant portfolio of commercial, educational and institutional commissions; residential projects; and urban developments, notably multi-family residences and adaptive-reuse projects. GKA’s special expertise in the niche areas of zoning, land-use changes, variances, urban planning and historic restoration is a critical resource for clients. In 2011, GKA joined forces with Gwathmey Siegel + Associates, the architecture practice of the celebrated modernists Charles Gwathmey, who died in 2009, and Robert Siegel. The resulting firm, Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman & Associates Architects (GSKA), works collaboratively with GKA to provide clients with the full spectrum of architectural services. For more information, visit www.gkapc.com.
