Grand Hyatt, Incheon, South Korea

South Korea’s Incheon International Airport is one of the world’s top airports, occupying an important position for international trade and cultural exchange. With its H1 hotel filled to capacity most of the time, Korean Airlines wanted to develop a new H2 hotel and retail complex to accommodate the airport and airline’s demand.

In addition to guest rooms, H2 includes restaurants, ballrooms, meeting rooms, business centers, spas and fitness centers. In need of a global firm with international experience in hotel and hospitality facility design, Korean Airlines selected our firm to provide various engineering design aspects for this exciting project.

Because we joined the project team after the conceptual design phase, our engineers had to be diligent—and flexible—when developing and presenting solutions to fit the concept’s design. We carefully studied the design to find and reconfigure any potentially misused space for MEP purposes.

We also developed innovative solutions to overcome other design obstacles, such as Incheon’s mandatory requirements to use district heating water for HVAC cooling, which creates an inefficient energy dynamic. Our team presented multiple analysis studies. The result was the selection of an energy-conscious hybrid option using district heating water and electric chillers with heat recovery. To reach a LEED® Gold standard, our team also implemented a recycled water strategy with two separate draining systems. This dramatically increased both water and energy savings over the entire life cycle of the building.