Aurora Residences and Courtyard Marriott Interiors
Aurora's interiors combine exposed concrete with warm finishes and wide-plank white oak floors.
The Aurora Residences and Courtyard Marriott is a new 33-story mixed-use hotel and residential tower, located in Long Island City, Queens. The building includes a 160-key hotel on the lower 10 floors, and 16 floors of residential above.
The tower has been designed to take advantage of its wedge shaped site, which tapers from a wider northern edge to a narrower southern one. Its western façade is on a quiet and mostly residential street, and faces the Manhattan skyline. The eastern façade fronts on Queens Plaza and Dutch Kills Green, a recently constructed city park.
The residential and hotel uses are separated from one another, and each has its own distinct identity. The residential palette is light browns and golden hues, while the hotel spaces are defined by white marble and grey granite. Both components share a language of slatted wood that is used to divide spaces and create an intimate feeling.
The residential lobby is bookended by a honed brown travertine feature wall and a slatted wooden wall.
Between the two, walls of striated porcelain tile echo the variegation in the travertine in a more muted fashion. A broad corridor leads from the lobby to the elevators; one side of it is lined with a matching iteration of the wood slatted wall, but this one is punctuated by a broad horizontal cut that features a wide white swath of the residents’ mailboxes.
The hotel lobby opens onto Queens Plaza South and Dutch Kills Green at one end, and overlooks 29th Street at its other end.
Bringing daylight through the space was an important driver of the design. The front of the lobby is dominated by a large glass mural featuring a stylized map of New York City and its environs. A pair of oblong reception desks that are clad in white marble are placed in front, and opposite them is a long and angular grey granite fountain that provides a seating area for guests.
As the lobby continues, a wall sculpture welcomes guests through the building.
The metal blades of the sculpture fan out in an array that follows the change in the building’s plan geometry as guests move through the space.
At the rear of the lobby, a large marble bar reintroduces the orthogonal geometry and materiality of the reception desks, with a bank of large windows behind them.
This larger gathering space is subdivided into a number of smaller seating areas through the use of suspended wood and metal screens that feature the same stylized map motif, this time rendered as large, architecturally scaled lanterns.
At the 30th floor a residents’ lounge ties the interiors to the exterior of the building by featuring exposed concrete walls that wrap around two of the walls of a double height space.
The opposite wall features a large built-in wet bar and cabinets that are all clad in a warm walnut veneer, the floor is white oak and the ceiling is white plaster, the east and west façades of the room are extensively glazed and capture the Manhattan skyline to one side and Sunnyside Yards to the other. Cantilevered off the concrete wall are a series of walnut bookshelves and cabinets.
Residential units present a clean and modern palette of wide-plank white oak floors and white lacquer cabinets.
Units are complemented by floor-to-ceiling glass and powder coated white mullions.
Handel Architects led the design for the exterior of Aurora as well.
The exterior is visually defined by a taut sheet of glass, framed by a thin concrete slab.