Hotel Moxy Kaunas Center, belonging to the international chain Marriott, is the first Moxy hotel in the Baltic States.
The main customers are guests - both leisure travelers and young business people - staying at hotel for 2-3 nights. In order to meet the needs of modern travelers and the fast pace of life, the premises are fully equipped for comfortable work, meetings and leisure, which allows guests not only to spend a great time, but also work or hold a necessary business meeting without even leaving the hotel.
Moxy stands out for its vibrant environment, style and comfortable simplicity. The 24-hour cocktail bar is also a part of the hotel reception, the closets in the rooms have been replaced by metal openwork constructions with various functions adapted to the needs of guests - hangers, folding work desk, mobile lamp, illuminated mirror.
The main architectural idea of the building was dictated by the interwar architecture in the surrounding area, characterized by massive plastered volumes, a stable rhythm of openings and the decor of organic elements.
The building has found a dialogue with Kaunas interwar modernism - it is not connected to neighboring buildings along the perimeter, it is retracted, the outer walls are rounded. The first floor is glassy, like an extension of the street. And what is above it is an example of clear, rough architecture.
Inspiration of the smetonic buildings is reflected in the volume of the new building by stylistically replicating some of architectural heritage of Kaunas city characteristic features, such as rounded facades, rhythmically expressive decorative pilasters, a floating cantilever above the ground floor and a coarse texture plaster with a unique hand-made pattern. This plaster is not classic, it has a stroke and a hint of old buildings. Plaster has scalability, roughness. By illuminating it, it can be seen that the stroke was made not by mashine, but by a hand.
The internal interfaces with the external architecture can be seen in the strict lines, the structural elements that the project interior design team tried to keep open everywhere. The clean, rough open concrete and metal materials were visually softened by combining colored furniture, textiles and carpets.
The exterior details were perfectly complemented by a modern and lively interior, distinguished by non-standard compositions of natural raw materials (concrete, black and rustic metal, leather and wood), handmade lamps, large scale photos and unique graffiti created exclusively for this hotel.
To avoid the usual formality of the hotel market public spaces promising new experiences are decorated with encrypted Kaunas signs and symbols, such as Bison figure, the motifs of the old city sign, the specific expressions understood only by locals – all of it stimulate interest, informal communication and provoke smiles of foreign travelers as well as local guests.
Lead architects: A. Natkevičiūtė, A. Rimšelis, P. Narauskas, G. Natkevičius
Structural engineers: A. Sabaliauskas, A. Amolevičius