This 100-room hotel is on a proposed plaza on the west end of a master plan in the Grand Mosque district of Abu Dhabi. The site borders a long narrow tidal inlet, and the hotel sits at a point where the plaza descends to meet the end of the inlet.

The extended hotel and spa program occupies parts of three small, low density blocks of the master plan. It includes a little over 100 large 750 square foot rooms concentrated on the block facing the water. The preponderance of the rooms face either the plaza or the water directly. The ground floor of this block is organized around a number of low scale courtyards that accommodate pools and a spa.

The middle block handles the servicing of the hotel. There is underground parking under the entire block and some structured

surface parking. There are two restaurants, a kitchen and servicing, and some adjunct suites in this block. You enter the hotel on this block, down a short colonnade at the corner of the plaza, past two restaurants. The hotel lobby sits prominently astride these two blocks, like a bridge over a canal, with water views in both directions. A third, smaller block accommodates a separate spa for women. This facility is secluded and private, organized like the hotel, around a series of outdoor spaces.

The watercolors describe the massing of the hotel- the public scale and character of the hotel seen from the plaza and from the water, and the smaller, private scale of the hotel’s individual courtyards. There is a section through a string of courtyards with the taller wings that face the water in the background.