Hotel Unique

Ruy Ohtake, Architectural Poetry - Regarded as one of the most incredible architects of the 21st century, his projects challenge conventional architecture.

Creator of innovative and original forms, his buildings are an incontestable proof that the mind of this Nippon-Brazilian has room only for works of genius. The effervescent spirit of Ruy Ohtake’s architecture is owed to, above all, a concept that he himself has coined, in that all things must have a meaning. One only needs to observe the sensual curves of the Unique Hotel, an innovative building featuring tenuous lines and structures that already comprises part of the São Paulo skyline, to understand his concept of architectural art. The hotel has garnered international prestige since its inauguration and has conferred unequaled kudos to Ohtake as a great artist and a transformer of urban space.

When he was commissioned to design a hotel, that had to become a design landmark, at the request of the owner, Ruy Ohtake accepted the invitation as a challenge. “I really wanted to build something innovative, light years from the commonplace,” confided the architect who dared to create a distinctive construction model to house one of the most well known hotels in the world of luxury hostelry. He stated, “the empty space can have strength”, and he believes that this trait is the distinctive feature of the Unique Hotel building. This empty space is associated with the 25m-tall column, the mandatory limit set by urban street planning, which supports the six-storey hotel’s semicircular nave. The rooms follow the same shape with the 1.8m diameter round windows, which allow in natural light. The project in the shape of a large inverted arch is extremely relevant to a megalopolis like São Paulo and it was in thinking about this city full of skyscrapers that the architect decided to design and place the Skye restaurant on the rooftop.

Working with innovation is one of the trademarks of Ruy Ohtake, the Brazilian son of a Japanese mother, Tomie Ohtake, one of the greatest artists in Brazil. Since her family arrived in 1936, emigrating from Kyoto, the name Ohtake has long brought to mind images of art and poetry in the form of curves and colors. The architect has a number of creative and contrasting works located throughout the country, including the Campo Grande aquarium in the Pantanal wetlands region, the Estação dos Práticos in the Santos harbor area and the Memorial da Cidade in the state of Piauí. In São Paulo, he has worked on the cultural center, Centro Cultural Tomie Ohtake, the Renaissance Hotel and a horizontal 23-block housing project in the district of Heliópolis, one of the largest lower income neighborhoods in the São Paulo metropolitan area, for which the architect choose, as a differential, one of his passions, the colors.

“I like the colors of commitment, like blue, red, intense yellow, green or purple,” explaining the intense color pallet that he used to paint the facades of the lower income housing project, which gained a new identity within its surroundings. “I make a tremendous effort to resurrect the colors of the city where I have developed my projects,” he explained. Another interesting story about the way in which his works interact with the urban skyline was in 1982, when the State Department, Itamaraty, invited Ohtake to design the Brazilian Embassy in Tokyo. The building drew so much attention that it became a pilgrimage site for young architects who wanted to see the works of this Japanese descendant up close and personal. The success and number of people streaming to the Embassy was so large that it had to institute daily visiting hours so that the curious could visit the building. This type of behavior fascinates the architect who confessed, “My dream is that in 50 years my work will be a part of different cities and continue to enchant the public…” with the interest it is already generating, there is no doubt that this will be the case.

Ruy Ohtake