We review Morpheus, a welcome surprise on Macau’s ‘more-of-the-same’ Cotai Strip
The newly opened Zaha Hadid-designed hotel, with its stunning architecture, complete with a hole in the middle, and refined interiors is a breath of fresh air
Macau’s Cotai Strip is a mass of gargantuan hotels, each trying to outdo each other in terms of size, glitter and mass-consumer kitsch, with few exceptions.
If not for China’s clampdown on capital outflows from the mainland, the success of these hotels would face no limits as they pile in tourists and gamblers – and not necessarily in that order.
The Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton, the so-called “high roller hotels”, sit discreetly by design in the shadow of louder and bigger properties such as the Venetian and Galaxy.
Yet this is what makes the newly opened Zaha Hadid-designed Morpheus such a breath of fresh air in Cotai.
In true Hadid style, the curved lines of the hotel – the latest addition to City of Dreams – rise proudly at the forefront of Cotai.
There is no missing it: the hole in the middle makes it look as if a meteor has exploded through the 28,000 tonnes of structural steel and 48,000 square metres (516,700 square feet) of glass.
The fact sheet lays claim to the hotel being the “world’s first free-form, exoskeleton-bound, high-rise architectural composition”.
The architecture is truly unique, although the downside is that the glass needs constant cleaning, which is no easy feat.
