OBSERVED
iceberg
architecture
hospitality
What might seem like a stunt
is the outcome of thoughtful
consideration.
Making Waves
King Kong’s stark design folds
in a dialogue with its historic
neighbors on Bordeaux’s active
Bacalan Quay.
A new waterfront hotel disrupts Bordeaux’s
18th-century architectural vibe.
In Bordeaux, France—that most architecturally traditional of cities—a five-story, snow-white,
origami-like structure has materialized at the end of a row of picturesque 18th- and 19th-
century facades. “It’s gotten much more attention than we anticipated,” says Alain Dhersin,
who, with his wife, Chantal de Knyff, owns the Seeko’o, a new hotel overlooking the Garonne
River. It refers to the building’s 10,700-square-foot facade, composed entirely of white Corian, the first such use of DuPont’s solid-surface acrylic polymer in its history. Yet what might
seem like a stunt is the outcome of thoughtful consideration, by the local King Kong architecture office, of a series of opposites: contrast versus contextualism, originality versus pastiche, past versus future. continued on page 54
