Glenn Howells Olympian Hotel

Glenn Howells Olympian Hotel

Published on 12-08-2008 by Skyscrapernews.com
The area around Olympia and Earl's Court has been one of more perplexing parts of London with large-scale redevelopment seemingly to have mostly passed it by despite the obvious potential of the neighbourhood.

All this is finally looking like changing with a new Apart Hotel being the latest in an increasing number of big projects that promise a transformation of the area.

The joint venture is being developed by Sunlight Projects Ltd, and the Earls Court and Olympia Group and has been designed by Glenn Howells Architects.

It features a ten storey hotel building rising to 32.6 metres in height built over what is currently a marshalling yard close to Olympia overlooking Hammersmith Road and Lyons Walk. In it will be 259 hotel rooms and 69.5 square metres of retail space on the ground floor. 26 of the rooms have been adapted to make them friendly for wheelchairs.

The architect has chosen for the design a glass curtain wall that features horizontal bands of aluminium running along it arranged as if they are geological layers of rock between levels of soil. Coloured white, they are aimed to fit in with the nearby art-deco frontage of Olympia.

The aim is to create a "striking contemporary building", one that has been welcomed in principal by the Mayor of London's office but as always the devil is in the detail of the planning application and they'd like to see more before they give it the full thumbs up.

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Located on London's South Bank near the Oxo Tower, the scheme is being developed by Coin Street Community Builders who want to build an 8292 square metre community centre including a new swimming pool, with an additional 829 square metres of retail space.

To pay for the community centre, the developer also wanted to build a 140 metre tall tower rising to 43 floors with 329 apartments in total split between it and adjacent 7 and 8 storey blocks.

The scheme had been opposed by English Heritage which was concerned about the effect the building could have on the roofline from inside the courtyard of the Grade 1 listed Somerset House although this has already been broken by the under construction Silken Hotel which barely registered a murmur from heritage groups as it sailed under their height radar.

Concerns were also raised about the visbility of the tower from St James Park and how it would break above the established roofline of neo-classical Victorian buildings. The public inquiry into this found that the intrusion would be minimal and the view would continue to be dominated by the historic buildings in the foreground.

There was disagreement though on this between the planning inspector and Secretary for State with Blears not agreeing with the view that "the tower would appear disturbingly prominent or oppressive in scale" and that the inspector was overstating his argument when claiming the amount of harm the project would do.

What harm would be done by the project, the Secretary of State has said will be countered by the community facilities that Coin Street aim to construct as part of the project and that as a result the planning gain makes the scheme worth it.

It seems that the plans to reduce the scale of the main tower by architect Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands from 168 metres tall and 47 storeys have been enough to get it through a public inquiry in the face of overwhelmingly sensationalist opposition.

English Heritage meanwhile has described itself as "appalled" and branded the decision "incomprehensible" claiming they "do not consider the matter closed" but quite what they can do, assuming Blears has made no errors in her decision, remains to be seen.

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