Hotel Saint George, Marfa, Texas (2013-2016)
The Hotel Saint George is located in downtown Marfa, the fabled Southwest Texas town, known for the beauty of its Chihuahua desert landscape and the works and installations of the American artist Donald Judd and other site-specific works by some of his contemporaries. The hotel is a three-story, light steel structure built atop an existing one-story 1929 retail building. The 12,000 sq. ft. footprint of the existing reinforced concrete building was sub-divided into multiple retail spaces, which were removed to produce a single sweeping, continuous space. This new space accommodates the public amenities of the hotel such as lobby, restaurant, bar, bookstore and reception areas. It also functions as a large public living room, available to locals, visitors and guests alike. The three floors built on top of the original structure house the hotel’s 53 distinct rooms, each with uniquely framed views of the town and its myriad landscape. The removal of the ground floor walls and reflected ceilings allowed us to expose the beauty and intricacy of the building’s concrete armature of columns and beams. There is a purposeful and elemental treatment of all surfaces in this reconfigured public space, which also informs the discreet economy applied to the building exterior. The subtle interplay of a marble mosaic plinth with light stucco banding for all upper floors (painted two variations of the same white), animates the exterior massing.
