Horizon Hotel

The Hobson Street Hotel is a 12-storey, 300-room five-star hotel that forms part of the master plan together with the New Zealand International Convention Centre for the block of land bounded by Hobson Street, Wellesley Street and Nelson Street with TVNZ sited to the north. The design challenge was to create an iconic addition to the Sky City complex, with a building that had its own character reflecting its use, while also enhancing the physicality of the new convention centre. The hotel has an air bridge linkage to the Sky City main site. A pedestrian laneway adjacent to the hotel will house bars and restaurants at street level to link Hobson and Nelson Streets and interface with the convention centre. The challenging site constraints with various setbacks and height restrictions were responded for with a hotel design that responds to those constraints. Hotel rooms are arranged in a curving formation either side of an elliptically shaped atrium. Rising up between the hotel rooms, the atrium orientates the rooms to the north and south of the site while maintaining privacy and outlook from the adjoining buildings. The building is fully glazed to maximise outlook but carefully controlled with overlapping guards van windows on the south side in close proximity to the New Zealand International Convention Centre. The Hobson Street Hotel was designed by Moller Architects in association with Warren and Mahoney.