15 Courtyards

15 Courtyards is a 12-key boutique hotel concept on three combined lots in Cairo, Georgia, a small city off the interstate. The owner wanted a building that would bring short-term hotel stays into a town with very little of that infrastructure, and that would read as a landmark for the residents who live there.

The site is an empty lot. The land development permit and a zoning variance are both still pending; the City Council vote on the variance is the next gate. Until that clears, the project remains in a design-study phase, with the documentation set ready to advance when zoning catches up.

Studio RNB is acting as Design Architect on the concept. We shaped the program around the owner's brief for something new and quietly contemporary, working against the temptation to import a design language that the town would not recognize. The result is a building organized around fifteen interior courtyards, each one different in scale and planting, that pull daylight and air into the rooms and the central amenity. A small museum component sits next to the keys and gives the building a civic role beyond hospitality.

We have carried the project through concept design, schematic design, design development, and construction documents while the zoning question continues. The drawings will be ready to enter permitting on the day the variance clears.

If the City Council approves the variance, the building will give Cairo a new hotel option and a landmark that the town can claim as its own.