Accommodation at airport reflection of city’s complex DNA.
Airport hotels can often be bland and dreary refurbished beehives with the one distinct advantage of proximity. Tailor-made for aircrew, those red-eye stopovers or hit-and-run business trips.
The trouble is that far too many hotels use the term rather loosely and can be hundreds of metres, if not the oddkilometre or more from the terminal. Few have the luxury of location and splendour of Auckland Airport's Novotel, which is but a heartbeat from the terminal footpath.
However, in late November amid much fanfare, a new airport hotel officially opened at Canberra Airport which would give the Novotel a fair run for its money for location, eco-innovation and design. Mind you, Canberra never does anything by halves. It's one national capital that beats its bureaucratic chest heavily.
The plethora of grand and garish public buildings are a showcase of national treasures and administration, and half the reason why tourists make the pilgrimage to the ACT. As the first building you lay eyes on when exiting the airport, The Vibe was deliberately designed to be a bold statement as the gateway to the city.
The all engulfing internal atrium of the Vibe Hotel.
Architects Bates Smart will tell you they set out to incorporate Canberra's DNA in the building. Well, Canberra has a complex DNA. Often at odds with itself between the national power on Capital Hill and the local ACT Legislative Assembly over on London Circuit. Members of the House of Reps and adjacent Senate are mere transients to Canberra but the immense bureaucratic machinery they represent lives there.
Splice this with the numerous embassies and outposts of nations, the intellectual quadrant of the sprawling National University and the normal goods and service industry that mows the lawns and keeps it all clothed and fed, and you have a very intricate cultural blanket.
At street level, Canberra was designed by Sir Walter Burley Griffin and it's his unique design that has stood the test of time and allows the city to function 24/7. The centrepiece is the sweeping circles at Capital Hill and the nearby Canberra city, which are connected by gun-barrel straight roads.
So to capture this signature DNA and reflect it all in a building required some serious deliberation. The result is a teardrop-shaped building footprint based around two adjacent circles with one considerably smaller than the other, yet connected at tangents. Inside the larger is yet another circle, which is in fact a towering atrium.
The building's exterior is a flush-glazed skin covering a chain mail curtain of circular anodised hoops that blanket the vertical walls of the building but by no means conceal the rooms. The plush rooms radiate out from the all-engulfing internal atrium, which again reflects the geometry of Canberra.
For my mind, it's one slick companion to the newly developed sprawling mass of glass and contemporary design that is Canberra airport.
There have no doubt been eye-watering millions invested by the Canberra Airport Corporation in both these projects. But what plans lay ahead?
Canberra is serviced from Sydney by Virgin and Qantas, who use the ATR turbo-prop commuter planes. The airport was all but empty when I arrived, and when I departed. Yet the vast amount of vacant space said volumes about plans to increase traffic to the region.
But I have to confess I was heavily distracted numerous times by the Vibe's companion at the gateway to Canberra. Across the road is a more familiar vibe - a giant mesmerising kinetic "wind tree" sculpture by renowned NZ artist Phil Price, which sits in a stone-landscaped koru garden. A stunning symbol of Canberra's prized collection of public sculpture. Perhaps too, a silent but healthy reminder of NZ's contribution to Australian arts and culture. Well worth the visit.
The Vibe
Cost: A$50 million ($53 million) Architects: Bates Smart Developers: Canberra Airport Corporation Operators: Toga Far East Hotels Capacity: 191 rooms including 12 suites and 9 apartments over 6 levels Facilities: 24hr reception, restaurant, bar and lounges, gym, conference rooms, free Wi-Fi Within 5 mins walking distance: Airport, All Hire Cars, taxis, bus stop and service station, Phil Price kinetic tree sculpture Distance to city centre: 10 mins drive.
Rod Emmerson travelled courtesy of AirNZ, Virgin Australia, TFE Hotels and VisitCanberra.
