INTERVIEW ANDREW ONRAET ANDREW ONRAET INTERVIEW
ANDREW
ONRAET
What started as a cross Channel road trip with a hotel guide book and a sheaf of Post–It notes has developed into Von Essen
Hotels’ thirty strong portfolio of luxury hotels. With its first newbuild – Hotel Verta at Battersea Heliport – under development,
Catherine Chetwynd met the group’s creative director to find out more.
iven the exigencies of the current divided into Classic, Country, Family, Continental standard bearer for what it was to become.” Onraet
G
economic climate, creative director and and Metropolitan sets – the latter two consisting of emphasises that he tries hard to stand back so that he
development architect of Von Essen hotels one hotel each. “Some years ago, Andrew Davis and I is not imposing his style on all the properties.
Andrew Onraet must feel like a pig in clover with £50 went through England and France with a Johanssens Washbourne Court (Country Set) and Lower Slaughter
million to spend on acquisitions, developments and and marked it with Post-its,” says Onraet. “I found it Manor (Classic), both in Lower Slaughter in the
refurbishments. recently: we own the ones we had targeted. It was like Cotswolds, are good examples. Washbourne Court
That said, ten years ago, Von Essen barely existed. an archive.” had just been renovated when three months later, it
“[Owner and chairman] Andrew Davis was buying Onraet trained at Kent Institute of Art and Design, was devastated by floods and had to be closed. “We
derelict estates and renovating them into private which he describes as “the last architecture school had originally done it piecemeal because we had to
residences or residential splits. There were two hotels in England” and graduated from the RCA with an keep the hotel open but once it was shut, we took it
and they were part of his property portfolio,” says MA. He worked with Nigel Coates on projects for the further in the direction it was going anyway.
Onraet, who has been seminal in the creation of Von Welsh Opera House and on exhibition designs for the “It is outlandish, metropolitan, Chelsea in the
Essen. He and Davis met in 1998 and Davis asked him Whitney Museum in New York before establishing Cotswolds,” he says. “It is as contemporary we could
if he wanted to put together a collection of hotels. AEON Architects. “My practice was at the cutting go without being hostile to the building, a former
Onraet had doubts. “My hunting ground was Berlin, edge of loft conversion before Manhattan lofts came 17th century grain store,” says Onraet. “Lower
London and New York and I wondered whether I could across the Pond,” he says. Slaughter Manor is more cosmopolitan in flavour and
operate in the country,” he says. All of which is a far cry from tarting up country house slightly more refined. It is not intimidating or stuffy
Clearly, he made the right decision. Von Essen hotels. “It was a bit of a shock,” he says. “There was but has manicured striped lawns, topiary. Everything is
now comprises 30 properties and the collection is a lot to do around creating Von Essen, putting in the considered, down to the salt and pepper.”
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