The Hotel Resonance Taipei inhabits a long and narrow corner site with a slender slab of guest rooms running east to west. Its architectural language allows for multiple interpretations. It could be seen as resembling a giant game of Jenga in progress, with various blocks part-removed from the stack. It could also be an enormous chest of drawers—with some drawers left half-open. Alternatively, the culture writer *Dan Q. Dao, writing in Time Magazine, observed that the facade seemed to have been “designed to evoke frames on a film roll.”
In keeping with the latter interpretation, from the outside, each window offers the view of a scene played out by its room’s occupants, featuring actors of all ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds. From the inside, each window offers a framed view of the outside world, as if projected onto a square screen. But whatever the interpretation, time froze before the Jenga player could remove their chosen block, before the drawers yielded what their owner was searching for, and before the film had the chance to start rolling.
The program of spaces is arranged in a logical progression, taking visitors on a journey from public to private as they travel from outside to inside, then from lower to upper floors. The first story, at one end of the spectrum, hosts public spaces that provide generous volumes for congregating and entertaining. The second story, in the middle of the scale, carries a range of hotel amenities for guests. The third story and above, at the opposite end of the spectrum, offer utter privacy, with 175 guest rooms that are compact and economical, to keep costs down for business travelers. The north and south facades feature varied fenestration, with neatly laid out vertical slits of different widths; the shorter ends to east and west have oversized square windows, the most prominent being the projecting bay over the entry, which was originally intended to serve as a gallery.
Hotel Resonance Taipei offers a quiet oasis in a busy district, full of heavy traffic and populated by educational and administrative institutions. The hotel is in the middle of a worn-down residential area, but although its elegance is unexpected in this setting, it sits comfortably next to its neighbors. Making clever and inventive use of its confined site, it serves as a convenient and welcome amenity for travelers, and for passing local residents who are drawn to its tranquility and persuaded to pause a while.
*From Dao, Dan Q, “World’s Greatest Places 2021-Taipei.” Time Magazine, 2021:
“Another new arrival: Hilton’s 175-room Hotel Resonance Taipei, which boasts a boxy black-and-white exterior designed to evoke frames on a film roll.”
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