Full Moon Hotel

The Full Moon Hotel was a proposed building in Baku, Azerbaijan on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. Hotel Full Moon's design originally appeared as a disc with rounded edges and a hole in one of the top corners, with aspects that appear radically different according to the angle it is seen from. The front aspect is reminiscent of a glass Death Star but from the side profile it looks much like any ordinary glass tower. The Full Moon Hotel was planned to counterpoint to the Aypara (Crescent Moon) Tower under construction around the bay in front of the Port Baku buildings adding to the 'new Dubai' feel of the city's 21st-century architecture.

However, now that the building's skeleton is nearing completion, it is clear that the original design has been abandoned in favour of something looking more like a giant lotus flower

Design

Changing appearance depending on the view is reinforced by the cladding treatment the architect has selected. The front will have a glass diagrid while the back will be covered with hexagonal honeycombs shaped windows.

This main building will be a 35 story luxury hotel with 104,182 square metres of space for only 382 rooms, a relatively small amount of rooms given the sheer size of the internal space on offer. It will reach a maximum height of 158.68 metres.

The hotel is linked via a zoomorphically shaped podium that snakes curvaceously around the boundaries of the site to two residential apartment blocks entitled Palace of Wind One and Palace of Wind Two.^[2]

Construction

The Construction of The Full Moon began in the late first quarter of 2008. The architect and engineering consultant for the project was Heerim Architects, one of South Korea's largest multidisciplinary consultancies. The hotel is being built by Azerbaijani construction contractors. The entire project, which includes the hotel itself and two skyscrapers, (Palace of Wind One and Palace of Wind Two) will approximately cost $250 million to build.^[1]

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