Four Seasons will open a flagship hotel and spa in Philadelphia, US, in Q3 of this year.
Set in the historic city’s tallest tower – the 60-storey Comcast Technology Center – the new Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia at Comcast Center will include 219 bedrooms on the 48th to 56th floors.
Above the hotel, the 57th-floor spa will include seven treatment rooms and an indoor infinity pool. Industry veteran Verena Lasvigne-Fox – who was previously senior spa director at the Four Seasons Seychelles – has been named spa director at the hotel.
Lasvigne-Fox joined Four Seasons in Paris in 2003 and her move to Philadelphia marks her fourth hotel with the company.
She was first appointed senior spa director for Europe in 2010, while at Four Seasons Hotel George V, which was a role she retained during her relocation to Four Seasons Resort Marrakech in 2013.
Her regional responsibilities changed to Middle East and Africa when she was appointed senior spa director at Four Seasons Resort Seychelles in 2015.
The Comcast Center tower – a mixed-use space that also includes high-tech research and development spaces – is designed by architect Lord Norman Foster, and features a “sleekly minimalist” design. Foster + Partners won an international competition to design the Comcast Innovation and Technology Center, which will be America’s tallest outside New York and Chicago.
The design, which aims to be LEED Platinum, features a vertical series of ‘pocket parks’ and social spaces, and is vertically stepped, with loft-like workspaces and state-of-the-art television studios for NBC at the base. The hotel lobby is at the apex of the tower, along with a restaurant and bar with city views.
In a design statement, Foster + Partners said: “The core is split, creating a visual axis through the building to Comcast Tower and a clear orientation spine. This central spine is articulated at the top of the building as illuminated blades of glass, which extends 126ft (38 metres) above the tower to provide a marker on the skyline.
"The tower’s facades are animated by panoramic glass lifts and a series of 13 three-storey sky gardens, which rise up through the eastern elevation to draw a continuous strand of greenery through the building."
Four Seasons has several projects in the pipeline for 2018, including Twenty Grosvenor Square in London, the company’s first standalone residential property, as well as locations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Bengaluru, India; Desroches Island, Seychelles; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and the Astir Palace in Greece.
