Nestled among the brownstones on the venerable Schermerhorn Street in Brooklyn, DF&A’s modular hotel tower is slender but significant. Brooklyn Motto Hotel is Hilton’s first modular hotel, and, as a 26-story, 117-key building the width of a single townhouse, it uses every inch of its site. The design of the steel facade is a pure expression of the tower’s efficiency: the shape undulates from floor to floor with the addition (or omission) of ADA-compliant rooms. At ground level, a mega cantilever at the entry extends the public space–a ground floor coffee bar–out to the street. Finally we make the most out of our slender site by heading underground, where we embedded many of the hotel’s amenities, including an enormous F&B space lit by a series of large baffled skylights.

This ambitious use of subterranean space is perfect for a hotel that takes its design cues from the New York Transit Museum across the street. Subway signage, angled mirrors, and subway polls refer to the sleek, efficient, democratic aesthetic of the city’s public transit. The hotel rooms are modeled on cabin cars, with built-in furnishings and rounded corners. We even use graffiti as a striking design motif, in a nod both to the MTA and to one of the neighborhood’s most famous native sons, Jean-Michel Basquiat.