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| Brand identity is reinforced through crisp clear signage, externally and internally. |
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:: Panoramic Views
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A typical piece of contemporary architecture, the hotel is strikingly lit externally in accordance with the local authority’s policy that all its tall building should be lit at night. Croydon has a cluster of towers, unlike other London boroughs which tend to be predominantly low rise. With popular concert halls and easy rail access the borough has worked hard to create an identity in the urban area that makes London not just numerically Europe’s largest city but also physically Europe’s largest urban sprawl at around 100 square miles.
Lighting the buildings at night is one tactic that may work for the town but creates problems for a designer in creating an acceptable level of blackout inside the bedrooms – it is after all very difficult to prevent light spill into a room when there are thumping great floodlights right outside blasting white light onto the exterior.
Simon Ford, Head of Architecture and Interior Design for franchisors Intercontinental Hotels refers to giving franchisees ‘design in a box’ but in this instance designers Occa have worked hard with the owners to make as much of the opportunity of the new build to create a little extra in the interiors of the building. It surely must present a problem for a franchise operation when they are trying to set a standard over a number of openings spread across a time period of years, when within that same time span other hotels of competitive quality change the game by continuing that ever present trend in hotels of moving up market.
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Design of the shower rooms is crisp and cleam. Frosted glass screen between shower and toilet allows the sharing of a single light, whilst as can be seen, the bathroom door swings to act also as a toilet door.
Disabled shower room is if anything better than the standard bathroom with its walk in shower/wetroom arrangement (familiar to Danes as a standard for a shower area - all that is missing is the squeegee that usually hangs on the wall in Denmark). This bathroom will also suit many older people for whom the step in the standard shower is a hazard, and who will like the reasurrance of the grab rails.
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With the current bedroom design constrained by the franchisor, innovation is not a factor encouraged, presenting designers with an interesting challenge in creating an hotel that conforms to branding requirement yet has enough to differentiate it from others and encourage return visitors. In some area of the design these limitations also work against the brand itself – for instance the design of the bathrooms, supplied in podded form and so absolutely uniform, actually seem to me to have unnecessary cost built in and ignore improvements in bathroom technology currently available. As the bathroom is to my mind one of the major areas for hotels to offer enhanced guest experience this represents an opportunity missed to both improve that experience and to shave still further the costs of construction.
The bathroom design does use one cost saving design device that I first saw many years ago but have not seen since. Here the bathroom is designed so that the door into the room can also be used as a door to the toilet - a two-in-one functionality that is achieved neatly, and which is effective in separating the toilet from the bathroom, allowing the toilet to be used at the same time as a partner is using the washbasin or shower. It saves the cost of a door on every bedroom in the building. If the shower had been built to contemporary wet room standards then there could also have been a cost saving of a shower tray, surely an unnecessary adjunct in this installation, and possibly simplified the building of the bathroom pods?
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