HOTELLO.
Somnia et Labora.
Portable Office / Hotel Room for Das Konzept.

Hotello (2013) was developed in collaboration with visual artist Roberto DeLuca for the Swiss firm Das Konzept. The project responds to a latent urban condition produced by the twentieth century: vast interiors — warehouses, factories, military barracks, and lofts — built at scale and abandoned within a few decades. These spaces remain structurally intact yet programmatically empty, forming a suspended spatial reserve within the contemporary city.

Hotello consists of a four-square-meter portable unit conceived to temporarily inhabit these vacant interiors without permanently transforming them. Packed into a trunk, the unit unfolds into a compact space integrating the essential conditions for work and rest. A lightweight metal frame supports a translucent, sound-absorbing curtain that defines an interior volume without enclosing it. The surrounding architecture remains untouched; the space is occupied without being appropriated.

The unit can be deployed individually or combined with other modules to form aggregated configurations. Rather than proposing a new typology of housing or office space, Hotello introduces a reversible condition of inhabitation, allowing empty interiors to be used without redevelopment, ownership, or long-term commitment.

By framing vacancy as a condition to be temporarily inhabited rather than permanently resolved, Hotello anticipates a dimension later formalized within Epistemic Design: spatial transformation does not necessarily require structural intervention, but can operate through reversible configurations that maintain the openness of future possibilities.

Displace — Hotello displaces inhabitation from fixed architectural programs to mobile and reversible units. The project shifts focus from building new structures to activating existing interiors without altering their identity or structure.

Expose — By inserting a minimal inhabitable volume into large empty interiors, Hotello exposes the scale and vacancy produced by twentieth-century development, making emptiness perceptible rather than concealing it through renovation.

Mediate — The project mediates emerging forms of inhabitation between work and rest. By condensing both activities into a single portable unit, Hotello translates changing labor conditions into a spatial configuration capable of operating within buildings not designed for them.

Activate — Hotello activates vacant interiors through immediate occupation. Its portability and reversibility allow empty spaces to be temporarily inhabited without altering their structure or program. Activation operates through use rather than permanence.

Hotello treats inhabitation as a situational and reversible act. Vacancy is not framed as a failure to be corrected, but as a condition that can be engaged without foreclosing future transformations.