Amway Grand Plaza Hotel

The owners of the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel Tower worked with Gensler to upgrade the building’s aging curtain wall and replace it with a new, high-performing exterior facade in order to address ongoing performance and aethestics challenges. Through a recladding process, the new facade provides better performance and significantly improves the overall energy use, contributing to nearly 20% reduction, all while retaining its unique visual heritage.

To keep the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel Tower fully operational during the design and construction, the design team developed a custom solution — marking the first top-down curtain wall installation completed in the U.S. The facade replacement process allowed elements of the existing building skin to remain in place temporarily while the new high-performance envelope was constructed, guaranteeing uninterrupted presence of the AHC brand for guests.

Gensler also designed the hotel’s three-story restaurant, MDRD, located at the top of the tower, which opened ahead of the reskin project’s completion.