Interior Design Student Nada Boules Zag Hotel Design Wins 2020 Green Voices Award

Nada Boules is a rising senior in the Hillier College of Architecture and Design Interior Design Program and the winner of the 2020 Network of Executive Women in Hospitality (NEWH) Green Voice Design Competition. This competition “provides students with the opportunity to showcase their design skills while utilizing the very best in sustainable design products and practices.” 

The project submitted by Boules was the design of a Boutique hotel with a third floor rooftop bar and restaurant. This year the competition focused on shipping container architecture, featuring sustainability, zero waste and meeting either LEED or WELL certification standards. Started in a studio course with interior design professor Julio Figueroa, students were required to follow the parameters set out by NEWH to “execute a dynamic, creative, cutting edge design utilizing the very best products and technologies which encompass sustainable topics such as: site selection, water efficiency, energy conservation, products/materials, and indoor environmental quality.” 

The central parameter of the studio project was to use shipping containers in the design of the hotel. The design challenge for students was to take a number of environmental parameters into consideration while making design decisions. These decisions included adapting to existing conditions such as location, reuse of an existing building, choosing specifications appropriate to the green building certifications such as quality of light and air circulation, reduction of energy consumption, availability of quality water, and the use of materials that do not produce toxic off gases. 

“In terms of our design approach we started with site content research; the site location is in University Heights, and based on a building we had the plans for,” said Boules. “We studied the building structure that was to be redesigned and renovated, the site, the community and the culture. What we found is that University Heights has a lot of economic potential with centralized public transportation, easy transport from the airport to the area Universities, the Newark museum and local parks. The market segment, or clientele are primarily visitors to the campus, students and families, visiting professors and business commuters. International students and their families make up 30% of the population in local academic institutions (NJIT, Rutgers, Essex College). The building used to be a 2 story steel structure used as a garage, and was structurally sound enough to handle the weight of the containers.” 

“The project offered the students a platform to address ‘relationships of fit’ both physical and programmatic at multiple scales between the Hotel theme and its context. This was accomplished by crafting the spaces in the facility meticulously, implementing sustainable strategies and proposing a criteria for the positive value the hotel brings to the neighborhood,” said Figueroa.

“The competition offered criteria that matches the educational objectives of the third year interior design studio, it gives the students the opportunity to apply an adaptive-reuse criteria that addresses environmental quality, sustainability and develop familiarity with the current certification systems,” added Figueroa. “Furthermore, since the guidelines of the competition required a specific structure in a secondary city in the United States, the students were able to test the value proposition of their design as an element of change to our immediate University Heights neighborhood. That was the reason for assigning the structure located a few blocks away from our campus at the corner of Central Ave and Newark Street.” 

Boules said that the challenge was to accommodate every concept of green design and sustainability in her project. “We were using corrugated metal shipping containers, we had to think about sound absorption, how to reuse all parts of the container without just creating enclosed spaces with four walls. In some cases I removed the sides of the containers to use as pivoting walls or in the stairwells, and in other places I used the armature of the container as a design and structural element. The existing building was a square shape with chamfered corners, and I wanted to reference that in the visual design of the space so I used parts of the container as rectangles throughout, creating a zig-zag pattern, and that’s where the name came from, the Zag Hotel.” 

Boules has also declared a minor in sustainability and environmental studies, working with professor David Brothers and professor Maurie Cohen among others. She noted that “there are not too many interior design majors doing sustainability studies, but it makes a lot of sense. This project opened my eyes to the importance of two things, understanding what the community needs, and the environmental impact of every design choice we make.