Kon'nichiwa Düsseldorf.
The new niu Tab hotel conveys elegance down to the last detail.
Those looking for Japanese culture and lifestyle in Germany will quickly find it in Düsseldorf. A vibrant Japanese community has established itself here. The niu Tab was completed in 2021 in this environment and handed over turnkey by the London-based developer, Citygrove Securities PLC.
Located in the heart of the Rhine metropolis, the building of the Novum Hospitality hotel group was developed by SKAI, Siemer Kramer Architekten Ingenieure Partnerschaft mbB from Hamburg, and its interior features a custom design concept by Bachhuber Contract, the international specialist for hotel interiors.
The name itself says it all, as Tab stands for Tokyo, art, and beer. The lobby welcomes visitors with a mix of industrial design, street art paintings, and Asian furnishings with rustic furniture in a used look. SKAI Architects have given the new hotel building a restrained aesthetic.
The functional building, with 438 double rooms and 13 floors, blends seamlessly into the urban landscape. The U-shaped complex consists of three connected buildings. The high-rise section has twelve upper floors and is flanked by two low-rise buildings, each with seven and six floors. Upon entering, guests are greeted by large glass surfaces on the ground floor, offering views of the adjacent green space. Next to the lobby is a restaurant with a kitchen and a work/communication area.
"When designing the hotel complex, we emphasized a functional and calm architecture that integrates harmoniously into the urban space," explains SKAI Architekten, describing the architectural concept for the niu Tab in Düsseldorf.
Confident Facade Conveys Lightness
The facade structure was broken up by vertical bands of windows, combining groups of two, three, or four elements to break up the uniform arrangement of the window openings. The result diminishes the building's monumentality and lends it a confident naturalness. Wide, inward-tilted surfaces give the facade depth. Polished Portuguese limestone gives the cladding a certain lightness.
Sophisticated technology in the background
The conscious selection of high-quality materials is also reflected in the interior design. Durability, flexibility, and sustainability are important aspects in the planning and selection of the technology used in the hotel and catering sector. This principle was applied not only to the furnishing of the 438 double rooms, which range in size from 19 m² to 27 m², but also to the bathrooms. Concealed in the walls behind the simple, elegant TECEnow actuator plates, which blend in with the young, urban design concept, is the pre-wall system from the same manufacturer.
It integrates all sanitary modules and enables the reliable planning and implementation of various room layouts, as well as easy compliance with regulations such as drinking water hygiene requirements.
In the niu TAB, two bathrooms are connected to a toilet module with integrated drinking water hygiene flush via looped pipes. This automates the regular water exchange in the pipe network as needed, thus preventing stagnation and germ growth. All flushing processes are automatically recorded and can be documented and controlled via Bluetooth on a tablet or smartphone.
For the operator of the niu TAB, this automated technology represents a significant simplification for the proper operation of the drinking water system, as otherwise all pipes that have not been used for a long time would have to be flushed manually by draining water.