FOCUS 55
Project House of Gods,
Glasgow
FOLLOWING A THREE-YEAR renovation, the striking luxury hotel House of Gods has opened in the Glasgow’s Merchant City location. Occupying the corner of Glassford and Wilson Streets, the venue offers six more rooms than its Edinburgh counterpart, including a new room category that comes complete with four-poster bed and golden bathtub, as well as two presidential suites located on the hotel’s top floor, complete with private cinemas, expansive ensuites kitted out with twin baths and sprawling his and hers shower room, as well as the option to reserve the whole floor.
Right The interiors throughout aim for the highest standards of luxury
Even aside from the super-premium spaces, the interiors throughout aim for the highest standards of luxury, from hand- painted 24 karat gold embellished de Gournay wallpaper in the lobby bar, to the marble fountain crowning the rooftop bar. On the top floor is the new rooftop Garden of Eden-inspired restaurant and bar. Te space serves an all-day menu along with expertly mixed cocktails against a backdrop of city skyline views.
houseofgodshotel.com
LOCATED IN Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province in North China, this project consisted of the refurbishment of two floors of a commercial podium, part of a standard real-estate housing complex. Te scope of the intervention extended on the area of three existing shops and aimed to unify them into a single whisky and cocktail bar. Te space, mainly facing the main street, also has a discreet access from the back to a pedestrian commercial street.
Due to the presence of an apartment building on top, the space was heavily constrained by the structure, with load- bearing walls slicing up the space into small entities, as well as various pipes and shafts crossing the space from side to side. Facing the significance of the existing building, the work on the façade was essential to allow the new project to ‘fit’ in the cityscape. Design and architecture studio JSPA chose to remove all existing façade claddings and to recreate a new facade that would oppose the usual light cladding of commercial facades. Tey worked on a cast-in- place concrete façade that will assert its presence in the context through its materiality. Te concrete as a material allowed for a monolithic façade that brings a new texture into the city, and which also provides a long-lasting cover for the existing building.
Te project development aimed to create a bar for the city, and a gathering place opened to its surroundings. To emphasise the orientation of the space towards the street, the bar area was covered with a concrete arch ceiling, a curved suspended slab cast in place, that also allowed to dissimulate the service spaces in the back and all the machinery and pipes from the existing building. Focusing on a strong dialogue between the project and the city, the ground floor of the bar was conceived with a long concrete bench along the façade, usable on both sides, and a set of folding windows enabling the removal of physical barriers with the street. From the first floor, a sculptural helicoidal steel staircase leads to the second floor, where the project develops into a more intimate ambiance. A system of steel shelves was developed to create subtle separations between spaces and generate intimate alcoves, while
offering a showcase space for whisky bottles. Made from the boundless repetition of a single identical element, the showcase shelf created an interesting pattern that became the second strong identity element of the project. To accentuate the alcove feeling, three of the independent spaces were covered by a concrete arch, wrapping the space from wall to ceiling and allowing the cast-in design of benches and fireplaces. Te choice of the concrete came naturally from the idea of a long-lasting material that would age gracefully. On the first floor, it was combined with a grey brick flooring, which the tint and pattern would match with the wooden cast concrete of walls and ceiling. Te brick floor is also intended as reflection of public space and narrows the distance between the bar and the city. By contrast, all of the elements requiring direct contact from visitors were made of warm materials – for example, the bar surface made of oakwood, and the bench seats covered with leather – to enhance the sensorial experience of visitors.
jspa.fr
Project
The Whisky Bar, Taiyuan, China
Below French Beijing-based studio JSPA Design was behind the project
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