Our recently completed £8.5m conversion of a seven storey, mid-century office building in Glasgow city centre into an 83 bedroom luxury boutique hotel for Evans Dakota Hotels Ltd is open for business and making a great impact with guests. Part of a joint venture with Leeds based Evans Property Group, it is the first in a new chain of city centre located hotels from the Dakota brand which will be distinguished from its edge-of-town namesake as Dakota Deluxe. It has been ranked number one on travel ratings site TripAdvisor.
As part of the development, the existing in-situ concrete structure of the building was retained with the rear façades refurbished and upgraded with new windows and painted gables. In order to meet the Client’s aspirations to completely transform the building’s external appearance the entirety of the existing façades to West Regent Street and Pitt Street were removed.
The façade was replaced with an orderly grid of dark grey facing brick and large scale, aluminium framed windows to each bedroom. The monochromatic palette of materials was designed to accentuate the brand’s identity and includes opaque ribbed glass, textured Corian cladding, perforated steel awnings and polished granite panels and window surrounds.
We worked closely with the hotel operator and also interior designer, Amanda Rosa Interiors throughout the design and construction stages of the project to ensure we met the Client’s aspirations for the brand whilst also delivering a hotel which maximised not only the guest experience but the practicalities of operations alike.
Working within the constraints of the existing building and concrete structure proved challenging to coordinate the building services and associated structural interventions. However, the result was a compact and efficient space plan with generously proportioned bedrooms and intimate public spaces which ultimately add to the guest experience.
