Urban Villa London, Brentford Hotel Development, Accommodation Building, Architecture
Urban Villa Hotel London
Great West Rd, Brentford Building Development, England – design by Grzywinski+Pons, Architects
page updated 14 Oct 2016 with new images ; 17 May 2015
Urban Villa Hotel in London
Design: Grzywinski+Pons Ltd, New York City
Location: Great West Road, Brentford, West London, England, UK
New Hotel in Brentford
urban villa london
photo from urban villa london
Urban Villa is a 100 room hotel in west London. The property is unique in that it is a hybridization of a boutique hotel offering and an aparthotel — two programs that generally are mutually exclusive. The architects’ brief was to bring a design-led bespoke hospitality feel to a product that is traditionally anything but.
An even bigger challenge was to attempt to do this within a portion of a newly built and largely residential tower (not of our design) that was found to be rather prosaic and sterile. The architects had to look hard to find any character within the existing environment and, where possible, tried to peel back the layers that were at odds with their intentions.
The first step of the intervention within the existing building was subtractive — revealing structure and services where possible. On the ground floor Grzywinski+Pons architects designed the reception to double as a full bar, taking both cues and inspiration from traditional English public houses — pubs — where historically there were rooms to let and the barkeeper doubled as an innkeeper. The architects chose a palette that is bright and welcoming yet robust and functional — an environment where it felt just as natural to ask for extra towels as it would to order a cocktail.
The lobby also hosts a cafe designed for the same day-to-night mutability. A series of communal tables and more private breakout spaces sit between screens and under ceiling rafts. Grzywinski+Pons wanted to balance the abundant glazing and high ceilings with vertical breaks, warm and authentic materials, lush vegetation and texture. The space, while legible, light washed and convivial, is subtly apportioned into varying degrees of public and private space though void of any walls.
In the guest rooms we had less latitude to reveal the bones of the building so we focused on designing custom furniture and a finish schedule that would be congruent with the aforementioned public spaces. It is also within the rooms that the architects tried to wed the scope and amenities of an aparthotel with the aspirational feel of a design forward hotel — employing what scope we had to erase, or at least diminish, the palpable legacy of a developer spec residence.
The nature and challenges of this commission were unique for the architects and it is their hope that the spaces that comprise Urban Villa feel quite divergent from those which make up the rest of the building — that they managed to create an atmosphere that belies its shell and injected some heterogeneity into an otherwise uniform environment.
Urban Villa Hotel information received from Grzywinski+Pons Ltd, New York City
Grzywinski+Pons
Address: Great West Road, Brentford, London, TW8 0GP
Reservations – Phone: 020 3750 5000 / e-mail: [email protected]
Location: Great West Road, Brentford, West London, TW8 0GP, England, UK
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Grzywinski+Pons Ltd is a New York City based architecture practice led by principals Matthew Grzywinski and Amador Pons.
Matthew Grzywinski studied at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, earning degrees in Architecture and Industrial Design.
Amador Pons earned his Architecture degree at Syracuse University.
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