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 


© Hufton and Crow


of inspiration while out walking round Paris, when he saw a reflec- tion in a shop window. ‘And I thought: “this is what it's all about!” he said. There's no way we can imitate – we should reflect!’ So the way forward was with a highly glazed building. Once the


height (10 storeys) and the massing were agreed, the search was on for an appropriate glass to do this reflection job, again based on neighbouring buildings. From a start in February 2005, things moved quickly, and by June the practice had produced a CGI, which showed a hotel design that avoided the usual trick of a sim- ple curtain wall with all of the public spaces pushed deep inside. There was a precedent here. Jestico + Whiles had just finished


the Hilton Hotel at More London on London’s South Bank, where it successfully opened up public spaces to entice people into the reception area. Contrasting with many ‘enclosed’ tradi- tional luxury hotels, the inner workings of the scheme were exposed. The principle has proved a notable success: the More London Hilton has the highest occupancy rates of any of the operator’s hotels in London. Whiles explains that part of its secret lay in attending to the theatre of public spaces. At the W, Whiles continues, the hotel needed active frontages, but that couldn't start until the first floor. “So we decided to pull the the- atre to the wall,” he says. McAleer & Rushe normally build what Whiles brands ‘con-


ventional’ hotels, so the architects strove to create an absolutely conventional scheme behind its innovative skin. But instead of a


© Ewout Huibers


straightforward cladding they chose to hang it as a ‘veil’, with the curtain wall on the outside. This would keep the building cool; it would ventilate it and help save energy. But it would also pro- vide a hint of the drama of the sort usually offered by glitzy red carpet premieres at nearby Leicester Square or in theatreland. The scheme is, in fact, extremely dense in terms of its mix of


uses, the integration of which presented perhaps the main chal- lenge, Whiles points out. An active frontage of retail on the ground floor was a requirement, with the hotel starting on the first floor and another requirement – residential – above that. But a substation for the area also had to be incorporated, and since this is a ‘high stress’ area, no inset doors are allowed and robust materials were employed.


...continued on page 12


Top: The highly glazed W Hotel façade, reflecting surrounding London Left: W Store entrance


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