Business management & development
can be service driven, with hotels extending their lifestyle or food and beverage offerings into the surrounding communities to enhance revenue. Often this approach involves redeveloping existing facilities to make them more efficient or appealing, but increasingly the MUD strategy can be something altogether bolder.
As Dexter Moren argued, while all hotel owners
should already be looking at their hotels as MUDs if they are to be successful in the long-term, architects are increasingly being tasked with creating impressive multi-use hospitality venues that envisage hotels as integral parts of self- sufficient urban communities. Moren cited the example of the Shard, with its cleverly integrated collation of offices, restaurants, hotels and suites as the “ultimate mixed-use building”. Moren continued by drawing attention to his latest hospitality venture, The New Western Hotel, which sits on the Thames opposite the Tate Modern gallery, drawing attention to the role it was engineered to play within the local community. “We’re bringing the public on the St. Pauls side and we’re taking them through the building and out on the other side so the hotel [itself] becomes a kind of active, internalised street,” Moren explained. “Ultimately people can come and admire the view and sit out and look at the river and have a drink, which I think is fabulous.” For Moren, the next generation of hotels have myriad roles to fulfil, from acting as meeting spaces, co-working areas, leisure spaces, all those kinds of activities that make life exciting. “People don’t just work; they actually have
more interesting lives [than that]. We actually like to do other things,” he added, arguing that too many projects, particularly in the city, have been built within a myopic and singular framework, well-suited to one type of person, community or business. The next generation of hotels, Moren argued, should be more multi-faceted and more imaginative. In fact, this approach shouldn’t end with hotels.
Citing the Stirling Prize-winning Kingston University building as an example, Moren said that it was a fantastic example of a piece of inclusive architecture that strove to bring people “into the building” by focusing what the site could offer the general public. “[Ultimately], I’m increasingly finding that everything we do is hospitality, whether it’s co-working, co-living, hospitals, hotels,” Moren concluded. Echoing the merits of that versatile, multi-
pronged approach, Rob Steul began talking about The Londoner, his latest £500m project in Leicester Square, which he described as a “poster child for a mixed-use hotel development in the urban centre of any major city, certainly London”. Steul described
Hotel Management International /
www.hmi-online.com
the ambitious hospitality venture as encompassing multi-levels of activities and public areas surrounded by guest bedrooms “blended together both internally and externally”. It is a substantial undertaking with a cinema, roof terrace and with eight floors below ground level, including a ballroom and swimming pool. Some have even labelled it London’s first “iceberg hotel”. Speaking of the project’s driving mantra, Steul
said it hinged on the question that all architects and hotel designers should ask themselves: “what contribution can this hotel or our group of properties make to the surrounding area?”
The 180º challenge
Next the discussion turned towards the process rather than the end product with each architect outlining how the pandemic had challenged and altered working patterns, invariably birthing new or different ways of collaborating and working. Describing the pandemic as initiating an “180º change”, Tina Norden talked about how Covid-19 had birthed a completely different way of working. “We’ve gone from everybody working in the studio to flexible working, which is something that I personally never thought would happen in design,” Norden said, describing the transition as “super exciting”.
“[Ultimately], I’m increasingly fi nding that everything we do is hospitality, whether it’s co-working, co-living, hospitals or hotels.”
Dexter Moren
Another notable trend that the pandemic had accelerated, Norden noted, was the increasing prevalence of the Build-to-Rent (BtR) sector (formerly known as the Private Rented Sector, or PRS) which has grown substantially, particularly in Asia. While still technically residential enterprises, the communal or public-facing elements of these projects share many similarities with hotels and subsequently echo key facets of hotel design. “Effectively these are like boutique hotels or massive public spaces and small apartments that are like motel rooms, but technically are [still] rented properties,” Norden said. “In Asia, you work on a number of residential developments that are big public areas, which feel like hotels even though they’re actually residential.” Responding to my question on how architects were connecting with different places and cultures when travel was prohibited due to the pandemic, Norden reiterated that it had only enhanced the importance of liaising with local professionals who have a more intimate understanding of their environments.
Opposite page:
Event founder Monica Palmas welcoming guests and speakers. From left to right: Monica Palmas, Dexter Moren, Rob Steul and Tina Norden.
£500m
The cost of Rob Steul’s latest project The Londoner, in Leicester Square. The Financial Times
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