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In Taiwan’s capital is a hotel so captivating, the city ‘paused for a moment’ at its unveiling: The Blue has been designed with Emotionalism in its bones

The Blue in Taiwan was designed as a ‘response to this ever-digitising world’ by pair who wrote a manifesto calling for the Emotional city, not the Smart city

The art hotel, conceived ‘with Emotionalist principles in mind’, connects people through its spaces: think embedded quotes, exhibitions, a unique shade of blue

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The Blue, in Taipei, by Spheron Architects. Its designers talk about conceiving the hotel according to Emotionalist principles they set out in a manifesto that calls for architecture to counter an “ever-digitising world” where they fear humans are losing control. Photo: Yu Zhi Lin

Published: 12:45pm, 15 Feb 2024Updated: 9:39am, 19 Feb 2024

Some hotels move you to tears. Some leave you wistful; others blissful. So if you are told your hotel has been designed with buckets of Emotionalism, you might start searching for an adjective.

You will also be missing the point – if only partly.

Emotionalism in architecture: philosophy; movement; dream. It is founded on human emotions – with a name like that, what else? – but it is also a slippery intellectual concept.

So when you check into The Blue, in Taipei, you are checking into not just a newly completed hotel, but into a certain way of looking at the world.

The Blue, in Taipei, is scheduled to open in late April. Photo: Yu Zhi Lin

Some might say Emotionalism is an unattainable ideal, considering what it is up against. Alternatively, it might just stop us all falling off a cliff.

Among its chief proponents are architect Tszwai So, who grew up in Hong Kong, and architecture writer and editor Herbert Wright, both London based.