ABSTRACT
Describing itself as a ‘work-meets-play hotel’, Zoku Amsterdam combines the concepts of hotel, home and workplace into a single building. Zoku’s target audience is the digital nomad, a new breed of travelling professional who travels light and is not bound by location-specific forms of employment. Zoku is a clever example of how working and living nomadically can become very normal. It suggests that a transient lifestyle can still include home comforts and meaningful face-to-face interactions, whether that is dining with a stranger or bumping into a friend abroad. Zoku Amsterdam has a list of testimonials from people who have met clients and collaborators in its spaces, or used its facilities to kickstart a business. With Zoku, creating a design for ‘smart lofts’ that could be inserted inside disused office buildings. Accompanying the lofts are a diverse mix of communal spaces, designed to stimulate casual encounters in the most relaxed way possible.
