A hotel was once judged by its lobby.
The design of a hotel lobby has historically been the barometer of the luxury and sophistication it provides. Its scale, material palette, and decor was what got photographed, reviewed, and remembered the most. But some very significant decisions of hospitality architecture are made well before the first guests arrive. Site orientation, massing, the placement of back-of-house services, and the hotel’s relationship with its surroundings get fixed at the planning stage. Beyond which, architects today are also designing for various amenities that turn hotel complexes into micro-cities, with themed restaurants, public lounge spaces, and a range of recreational experiences. Modern hospitality architecture is now experimenting with the boundaries of what a hotel can be, and it begins with how it is placed in the city.
The Hotel Tower Is Not Just A Stacking Exercise
A hotel tower in a tight urban area is a configuration of 4-5 typical floor plans—the lobby, the amenities, and the rooms—replicated vertically. It is the most efficient model, and it generally works too. But in such a model, the approach, views, services, and the building’s microclimate are secondary decisions. At ACPL, we apply a site-responsive approach to all of our projects, especially hospitality. In resort and suburban topologies, massing acts as both a climate and programmatic strategy. Placing loud public spaces like banquets away from quieter zones, angling room modules to frame specific views, and carving deep recessed balconies for solar shading allow the building’s envelope to do the heavy lifting rather than relying on HVAC systems. This is how we are approaching the design for Radisson’s proposed hotel in Panipat, Haryana, where the organic massing of the hotel responds to the surroundings.
Mixed-use development is changing hospitality planning further. A growing number of Indian hotels are envisioned as a tower within a larger composition. In Faridabad, our design for Marq by Navraj places a Westin hotel tower and a residential tower on an integrated podium. This podium carries common infrastructure for both buildings, along with F&B and high-street retail that both hotel guests and residents can draw on, separated only by access. Arrival for a resident, a guest, and the podium visitor is orchestrated through different sequences, even while sharing the same street life at the base.
At Lucknow’s Ganpati Capital Court—a project with offices, retail, and studio apartments with two hotel towers—we make use of a similar programme. Our design connects these spaces with the active high-street at the front of the site, integrating the semi-private blocks with the larger urban fabric. On a macro scale, this reflects district-level planning like Delhi’s Aerocity, where individual hotel plots line a shared pedestrian promenade, allowing lobbies and F&B frontages to engage the public realm while keeping drop-offs and guest sequences strictly separate. The Flagship by CRC sits similarly within a larger complex too, but the hotel stands as an independent building, set directly alongside the complex’s retail and landscaped ground level, creating a micro-city within Noida.
As Indian hospitality accelerates into denser urban landscapes and expanding regional hubs, architectural value is now moving past statement interiors and visual luxury. Across newer hospitality projects, this is the level where interesting choices are being made: how a building negotiates its site, how it interacts with its context, and how seamlessly it balances shared efficiency and private luxury.
