Morpheus Opens in Macau, Zaha Hadid’s Exoskeleton Hotel

Morpheus, the new flagship hotel of Melco Resorts & Entertainment’s City of Dreams resort in Cotai, opened on 15 June 2018. Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, the 40-storey tower holds about 770 rooms, suites and villas, including three pool villas and six duplex villas, and was reported to have cost around US$1.1 billion.

The building is the reason to pay attention. Rather than hiding its structure, Morpheus wears it on the outside: a free-form steel exoskeleton, described by the architects and the developer as the first of its kind on a high-rise, wraps two towers that are joined at the base and the top. Between them, a series of voids is carved through the centre of the block, a gesture the practice relates to the fluid forms of Chinese jade carving. The voids act as what the architects call an urban window, opening the hotel’s interior to Macau and giving more rooms an outward view.

The site had a history. The tower rises from foundations laid for a condominium project that was later abandoned, and the design was extruded upwards from that existing footprint. Bridges crossing the voids carry the hotel’s restaurants, bars and lounges.

Zaha Hadid, who received the commission in 2012, died in 2016, and Morpheus is among the last major projects on which she led the design. Project director Viviana Muscettola presented its digitally generated, parametric design as a method that could change how complex buildings are planned and built.

For Melco, the hotel was also a commercial statement. Chairman and chief executive Lawrence Ho described Morpheus as the catalyst for relaunching City of Dreams, nine years after the resort first opened and at a time when newer properties had risen in Cotai. No new gaming tables were allocated to the hotel, which was aimed at the premium end of the leisure market rather than at expanding the casino floor.

Morpheus joined a resort that already included a Grand Hyatt and gave Macau a building that is discussed as architecture first and as a casino hotel second. OKYTO’s hotel page for Morpheus covers the stay itself.