The Draftsman Hotel is a new 150-room hotel located on West Main Street in Charlottesville, Virginia. The design approach for this project was to design a structure that represented the youthful and dynamic inhabitants of Charlottesville, but that also respected and blended with the scale and materials of the existing context.
The design attempts to reduce the mass of its ten-story structure by dividing it into smaller parts relating to adjacent existing buildings. The project is divided into three main elements, a podium, the West Main Street façade, and “The Tower” at the corner of 11th and West Main Street. The first main element is a 46-foot podium that houses the hotel lobby, retail space, two levels of parking and meeting spaces on the 4th floor. The podium height and color relates to the materials and color of the site’s neighboring buildings. The top of this 46-foot podium also houses the meeting rooms.
At West Main Street, the podium is split in two parts that define the retail and lobby entrances, also helping to break the scale at ground level. At West Main Street, above the podium and stepping back 15 feet, the second main element is broken down into 4 parts that respond to the verticality and proportions of the structures on West Main Street. The change of material visually detaches this element from the podium thus helping develop the level of visual impact on West Main Street. The split at the base podium gives way to defining the corner tower element of the project. Within this gap is a wall of glass that extends up the height of the building. This creates the hierarchy of architectural language that helps define the main entry while at the same time pulls together the different parts of the façade. A dynamic relationship of forms is created with a purpose. Contemporary materials, technology, and architectural gestures, together with traditional proportions, textures and colors give way to The Draftsman Hotel, the new and vibrant host of Charlottesville.