Overview

After a brutal hurricane, a landmark South Beach hotel needed a major makeover while maintaining its unique 1940’s elegance. Spatial Acuity’s 3D laser scanning team overcame a number of operational challenges and discovered numerous peculiarities in the design, but came out with highly detailed documentation of the building.

Process

Located between South Beach’s infamous Collins Avenue and the Atlantic ocean, the 205 guest room hotel is  in a prime location. It had a distinct look as well. Even in a town known for remarkable art deco architecture, this property stood out. Yet the hotel was in trouble.

It was not in any condition to take advantage of the area’s influx of tourists in its post-hurricane state. The building had taken a beating from Irma, and while it was still operating at some capacity, flood-damaged rooms were not generating revenue. Over time, this would lead to a major revenue gap. Time was of the essence.

A major renovation was sorely needed, but existing plans were shoddy to the point of being useless. Spatial Acuity’s 3D laser scanning team was called in to get down to the details. Laser scanning a hotel is normally fairly straightforward, but this project turned up some quirky details in the design of the building.

In most hotels, a typical “room stack” of one room type tends to be consistent room-to-room. In this case, they were far from typical. Minor variations in almost every room led Spatial Acuity’s modeling team to conclude there were over 50 distinct layouts out of 205 total guest rooms.

 
Since the site was an active hotel, the laser scanning team had to work around the comings and goings of guests. Working closely with management, they scanned 95% of all the rooms within a week.

With the 3D point cloud, the modeling team was able to assess the state of the building and precisely detail the vertical elevation and internal variations of each room, hurricane damage and all.

Result

The intricately detailed as-built model provided critical insight into how the structure was faring and how each room was constructed. This was essential to the interior designers, who were then able to select finishes with appropriate construction tolerances to account for the effects of the storm.