Building Architect: Christian de Portzamparc
Hotel Interiors Designer: Yabu Pushelberg
Developer: Hyatt Hotels, Chicago and Extell Development, New York.
General Contractor: Lend Lease
Stone Installers: Public Areas: Port Morris Tile and Marble Corp., Guest Rooms: V.A.L. Floors.
Photographer: Evan Dion
Walker Zanger Materials: Grigio Fantastico, Bianco Piove & White Onyx Slab
Guestrooms: WZ supplied over 250,000 square feet of Bianco Piove marble tile, over a two year period, hand selected from over 1.2 million square feet of tile cut for the project (WZ culled the very best 20% of the tile that was cut and finished). Each room was laid out at the factory, to make sure all of the stone tile matched. WZ also supplied the vanity tops and other stone pieces used in the guest rooms.
Public Areas and Amenities: WZ supplied over 20,000 square feet of Bianco Piove marble for the lobby walls, culled from over 80,000 square feet of slabs cut for the project. Over 15,000 square feet of Grigio Fantastico marble slabs were supplied for the lobby floors and staircase. All of the stone was laid out at the quarries, and hand selected to blend with the adjacent pieces. The ballroom was clad in 4,500 square feet of pristine white onyx, cut from over 15,000 square feet of onyx slabs. The onyx is installed in aluminum frames, and each panel is individually back-lit.
WZ offices in China and Italy supervised all of the quarrying, cutting and layouts, and more than 20 separate trips were made by the Developer, Architect, and WZ to the quarries and workshops, over the production period to fine tune the exhaustive selection process.