Client: Grupo Urvasco SA
Design/architecture: Foster+Partners
Size: 28,070 sq m
Cost: Undisclosed
Completion time: Eight years
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If Foster + Partners did hotels they’d probably look – well, exactly like this one. Having designed almost every other conceivable kind of building both inside and out, Lord Foster’s practice can now add the ME Hotel in London’s Aldwych to its glittering portfolio. To clarify, this isn’t Foster + Partners’ first foray into hotel design, but it is the first hotel the practice has designed in its entirety: everything from the shell of the building to the layout of the public spaces and guest rooms, down to the bathroom fittings.
The 157-bed hotel, designed to cater to a mix of business people and luxury travellers, has been a long time coming. The original developer, Silken group, commissioned the practice in 2003, but the financial crash of 2008 put the project on hold. The semi-completed building sat for several years with much of the marble that now lines its interiors already inside, until the work resumed in 2011 under new developer Meliá Hotels.
The building itself is delta-shaped and clad in white Portland stone, a material chosen to fit in with the neighbouring buildings, particularly the adjoining Marconi House – the historic location of the BBC’s first broadcast. An elliptical tower on the corner of the building contains the main entrance at street level, which is sheltered beneath a wide glass canopy.
The core of the building is a nine-storey-high pyramid-shaped atrium lined with triangular tiles of white marble – a breathtaking piece of interior architecture that Rowan Moore, writing in The Guardian, aptly described as ‘Bond villain/weird cult scenography’.
As dramatic as this space is, it is actually the result of a compromise: in the original design, the atrium was to have gone all the way down to the ground floor, where the reception was to have been; instead, Foster + Partners had to make way for a restaurant that now occupies that area. Checking into the hotel guests are directed to a lift lined with black glass which conveys them to the first floor and into the pyramid. During the day light streams in through the glazed-over apex, while at night light projections of jellyfish and geometric shapes play across the four steepled walls. The reception desk itself is an almost monolithic piece of black marble.
Compromise or not this space is a reminder of just how effective and harmonious the result can be when interior and exterior architecture and design is done in close collaboration, and especially by the same practice. Nigel Dancey, a partner at Foster + Partners elaborates: ‘Foster + Partners has an unusual approach in that we bring together architects, engineers, interior designers and a range of in-house teams from the earliest stages of a project to deliver a completely integrated design.’
Rather than trying to mitigate the building’s wedge shape in the interior architecture, Foster + Partners worked with it. The pyramid mirrors the shape of the building, as does a wedge-shaped drinks bar on the roof. This is surrounded by a V-shaped roof terrace that gives amazing views over central London and is furnished with pieces by Dedon and Kettal. Even the triangular bay and oriel windows of the guest rooms are inspired by the shape of the building.
The colour palette throughout is largely monochromatic with guest rooms lined in pale leather with black-lacquered TV cabinets and back-lit onyx shelves. According to Foster + Partners the design draws on the idea of yin and yang, as guests move from dark to light spaces – the crisp white guest rooms, for example, are reached by reflective black marble corridors, sculpted by the angled walls of the central pyramid.
Public areas such as the lobby are furnished with pieces by Cappellini, Davison Heighley and Johanson Design among others – mostly in neutral colours. In the lobby, Forster + Partners used screens of diagonally placed chrome rods to separate it from the entrance to the restaurant as well as to guide guests towards the lifts.
While some online commentators have suggested that ME represents a style of luxury that would be better suited the pre-crash world in which the design was conceived, many have pronounced the hotel to be well worth the wait. Perhaps the images don’t quite do it justice, but you’d have to have a stone (or marble, perhaps) not to be won over by that Bond-villain atrium..
Main suppliers:
Furniture:
Edra – edra.com
Cappellini – cappellini.it
Davison Highley – davisonhighley.co.uk
Johanson Design – johansondesign.com
Andreu World – andreuworld.com/en
BK Italia – bkitalia.com
Sancal – sancal. com
B&B Italia – bebitalia.it
Knoll International – knollint.com
Dedon – dedon.de
Lighting:
Lumina – lumina.it
Flos – flos.com
Willowlamp – willowlamp. com
Oluce – oluce.com/en/
Bocci – bocci.ca
Torremato – torremato.com
Via Bizzuno – viabizzuno. com
Flooring/materials:
Bic Carpets – bic-carpets.be
Stepevi – stepevi.com
Rubelli – rubelli.com
Jab Anztoez – jab-uk.co.uk
Kvadrat – kvadrat.dk
Gaston y Daniela – gastonydaniela.com
