Wilde Hotel, London
On 9, September 2024 the Wilde Aparthotel, Liverpool Street, London, opened its doors to the public. Located at 92 Middlesex Street in close proximity to London’s Liverpool Street station, the project represents the re-use of an existing masonry building with the addition of two lightweight floors above.
Main entrance to the hotel and the NBA designed tiles at ground floor
Strype Street elevation showing the two additional levels added and the folded arch mansard form
The site had originally been one of London’s ‘Truman’ pubs situated close to the main Truman Brewery site in Spitalfields.
The site was redeveloped as a warehouse in the late 19th century and, following heavy bomb damage during World War II, was rebuilt in the 1950s. The building sits along Middlesex Street’s famous Petticoat Lane street market and was purchased for re-development in 2018.
Strype street view with bronze window profiles
Wilde hotel signage added onto the faceted tiles
Section diagram showing the two additional floor levels
Aerial view showing the folded arch mansard shape and the extent of zinc cladding
5th floor street level plan
The zinc clad facetted dormer shapes are juxtaposed with the rectalinear brick windows
Located on the edge of the Wentworth Street conservation area, the site acts as a gateway to part of London’s history.
Any design for the redevelopment of the existing building would have to provide a well-informed narrative of its surroundings along with an interpretation of the location’s existing heritage characteristics.
Middlesex Street elevation
Via a collaborative pre-application and planning process, the design developed into a two-storey mansard roof, to include the additional floors, whilst also picking up on references to London’s traditional butterfly and mansard roof forms.
This enabled the increased volume to be accommodated whilst simultaneously presenting architectural references to the more domestically scaled conservation area to the east.
Detail of the projecting forms at roof level
Diagrams and site photos showing the construction of the additional floor levels with the initial steel skeleton and then timber infill panels
With 106 hotel rooms this Wilde Aparthotel provides an extensive central London offering with front of house reception, bar and catering facilities along with a laundry facility in the basement.
The rooms themselves vary from a selection of windowless studios to 3.6m high luxury rooms on the ground floor. A selection of studio style and one-bedroom offerings are also included.
Internal view of the bar area and reception
Internal view of an upper floor hotel room
The Wilde brand design guides were used to develop the interior room identities, whilst the front of house interprets a 1950 style curved pattern form.
All of the new top floor hotel rooms include external amenity space in the facetted roof form, with the two suites located at either end of the building boasting generous roof terraces that look west to Spitalfields and south to the rest to the city.
Internal view of an upper floor hotel room
Internal view of the bar area and reception
The exetrnal tiles seen from below
View of the lift lobby
View of the central corridor at ground floor
“Thanks Nick for today! Incredible project - we’ll be in touch for future office to C1 conversions as we’ve been looking at those a lot recently”
-Maxime City Relay
With the project comprising of the redevelopment of an existing building, the aim was to avoid producing a disjointed design from a collection of varied forms and building fabrics. It was important to create a link between the form of the new upper volume and the re-clad of the ground floor. The design adopted the approach of matching the grey zinc clad upper floor facetted volumes with bespoke facetted ceramic tiles in ‘Truman Brewery’ colours which also linked to the site’s heritage characteristics.
NBA developed a unique facetted tile form which related in form to the new roof geometry above. The new facetted tiles pick up the daylight and reflect it in facetted patterns of light. Additionally the tiles break up and animate the buildings rectangular block footprint at ground floor and repeat the form of the more muscular facetted forms on the new roof.
Top floor penthouse terrace view
The overall achievement at 92 Middlesex Street is the realisation of a quality of layered architectural and design thinking applied to a volumetric contextual challenge in one of London’s conservation areas.
The result is a playful design that achieves its commercial aims for additional accommodation with facetted forms and sensitive materials in an artistic fashion to provide architecture of texture and distinction.