Tramonto Phú Quốc Hotel

A lift car wall is the most touched surface in a hotel, and glass is one of the few materials that does not get worse for it. It does not scuff into a haze the way plastic does, it does not fade the way film does, and it does not need repainting after a couple of seasons.

The bar counter front is the same argument with a different kind of wear. Both are assembled from separate pieces, so a damaged piece is a piece replaced — not a panel.

Two kinds of work in one hotel, and they are nothing like each other.

The lift car wall is the coloured one: a band of light running from warm orange at the foot up to pale blue at the top, readable even as the doors are closing. It is the only place in the building using strong colour.

The rest is the run of upright cabinet fronts at the bar: grained and clear glass, the pattern carried by the lead itself, nearly colourless. They stand behind the counter all day, so they are not allowed to overpower what is set on them.

The lift wall runs a band of colour from amber at the floor to pale blue at the top. Glass has no continuous gradient the way paint does, so the transition is made by selection: many close shades laid in order, each step small enough that the eye reads one band.

Cut samples were sent so the colours could be chosen in real light before anything was cut in quantity — a colour on a screen and a colour with light coming through it are two different things, and in a graded band one wrong shade spoils the whole run.

The panels were assembled and soldered at the workshop and then shipped to the island. That is this job's own constraint: a panel broken in transit cannot be repaired on site, so every one was packed as though it would be knocked.