Greek architects design "smart" hotel room that adapts to guest needs

The Mapping Parametric Project (MaPPa), as the smart hotel room is called, was submitted as an entry when the Technical Chamber of Greece’s (TEE) invited architects to design and construct a model DIGI smart hotel section, to be included in the TEE booth during the 5th Athens International Tourism Expo.

Following its selection by the TEE committee, team members Ourania Andreopoulou, Thomas Giatzides, Sofia Mavroudi, Ioannis Rousogiannakis and Eleftherios Paliearakis presented their vision, which visitors of the Expo had the chance to share through projections, preforms and virtual reality scenes.
The room “ is defined through the design of two surfaces, the ceiling and the floor, which can be modified and which define each time with a different geometry the limits, possibilities and experiences within the space,” Sofia Mavroudi told ANA. Specifically, the floor has varying heights while the ceiling can be extended to adjust to different uses of the room, she added.

The kitchen and bathroom are stable areas, while the rest of the space is configured through cavities and curves that “ receive the processes of sleep, eating, relaxing and bathing,” Mavroudi continued.

The roof was designed as a parametric surface made out of camera shutters, which contract during the night and dilate in daytime in order to optimise the guest’s relation with the landscape.

“Hotel visitors can nowadays control various functions of their rooms such as lighting, temperature and music. What is innovative about this project is that the room itself is in a position to perceive the guest’s needs and adapt to them,” Mavroudi said.

The project was executed with the support of the Transformative Intelligent Environments Laboratory of the Technical University of Crete run by Associate Professor Konstantinos Oungrinis and the participation of researchers: Sotiris Ntzoufras, Akis Georgakopoulos, Stratos Georgoulakis, Marios Christoulakis and Iasonas Paterakis.