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The 750-room Grand Californian Hotel celebrates the romantic Arts and Crafts Movement popular in California at the turn-of-the-century. The hotel combines 'hand, heart and head' to integrate architecture, art, landscape and the decorative arts on its 12-acre site at the heart of Anaheim's Disneyland.
Guests are welcomed into the hotel through a one-story entryway, a two-story reception area and then proceed to the 65-foot-tall Great Room as if passing through a Californian Redwood forest. Spaces are layered and manipulated in large and small volumes and various levels of light to provide a feeling of intimacy within the vast scale of this building. Throughout the hotel guests can delight in the crafted detailing of paintings, light fixtures, cabinetry, furniture, floor inlays, iron and tile work, all designed in the spirit of the Arts & Craft movement by local artisans and the project's designers.
The Grand Californian presents a formal street side with entry gate and porte-cochere and a more natural side with balconies and arcades facing Disney's California Adventure theme park. Five and six-story wings form the project's edges and accommodate the existing and unmovable monorail that splits the site. In a final nod to the Arts & Crafts master architects, the courtyards at the hotel's cardinal points adopt the characteristics of the four seasons with different color glass, plants and sun, water, stone or shade elements.
(Completed by 4240 Architecture staff while part of UDG, Inc.)