28
feature
hotels, hospitality & sports facilities
enhancing our built heritage
Robin Gray at Alec French Architects explores how adaptive reuse in hotel design can breathe new life into historic city centres...
With their winding medieval streets and listed buildings, our historic city centres present both challenges and opportunities for modern-day developers. Finding suitable sites for new hotels, for example, or for much- needed community sports facilities in our urban centres can be particularly challenging. The constraints of limited space, high land costs and prevalence of historic buildings require imaginative design solutions that balance contemporary needs with preserving our architectural heritage.
A good example of this is the recent regeneration of the former
Everards Printworks in Bristol’s historic Old City and neighbouring listed buildings. Our brief was to transform a sprawling office complex, designed in the 1970s, into a mixed-use scheme comprising a four-star hotel with 255 rooms, conference facilities and a gymnasium. The £87.5m project also included a small number of retail units and 24 one and two-bed residential apartments. The aim was to
bring life back to part of Bristol’s historic old quarter which had been neglected and plagued by anti-social behaviour. Balancing modern needs with building preservation The proposals were developed with sensitivity to preserve the external appearance of the site’s heritage assets, while also extending and retrofitting the dated office block. Working with three Grade II listed properties was certainly challenging but provided the scheme with many unique features and great opportunities to celebrate Bristol’s historic past. The project included the restoration of the beautiful art nouveau façade of the former printworks which we knew would make a fantastic entrance to the new Clayton Hotel. The hotel also features a ground floor restaurant that connects
to the many existing pubs and bars on Bristol’s Broad Street, a stunning atrium with spiral staircase that occupies otherwise wasted space, and some hidden but grand conference spaces. The scale of the development and the sensitivity of the area made this an incredibly complex project. But it also demonstrates
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