The hotel was developed as an icon for visitors to the burgeoning Lower Manhattan cultural and historic center. In order to animate the facade and give an individual character to each hotel room, eight identical window panel units were randomly arranged on the facade, giving each room its own unique view. Mitigating the bland ubiquity of all-glass towers, composite aluminum panels with an outermost layer of bonded natural copper are utilized. One of the most durable of building materials, the copper ages and transforms over a twenty year period from brown in the first year to a rich and mottled green.