Screen Hotel is a hotel complex residing on top of a modernist garage designed by Paul Rudolf. The transparency created by the 20-feet-wide glass tower enables hotel residents to link their living experience with New Haven all the time. Unlike most generic inward-looking hotels with a core at the center of a floor, the Screen Hotel unrolls itself to become available to the vibrant urban fabric. Single-loaded-corridors invade hotel rooms on different levels, forming various communal gathering lounges with views open to both sides of the city. Visually floating on top of the garage, public event programs with an auditorium, a performance center, an exhibition space, and a restaurant are located at the lower deck of the complex. Elevator shafts and egress staircase for events pierce through the garage floor plates and structurally support the public program volume without disrupting the existing garage circulations. With a thin vertical hotel volume expanding linearly in Z axis of the city, the memory residents have in the building will be site- specific.The unrolling of communal activities up in the air informs the city in a way that the hotel becomes a social screen: a space for embracing and exhibiting the vibrating life at New Haven.
