Mondrian Hotel

January 2014

We're proud to announce the opening of Mondrian Hotel in London. Design Research Studio created the interiors for the hotel which hails from New York.

With 359 bedrooms, two bars, one restaurant, a spa and a cinema this is Design Research Studio's biggest project to date and allowed the studio to explore a wide range of environments, Tom explains:

'For us a Hotel is a dream job – it allows to work in so many different typologies – Spas and Bars, restaurants and bedrooms, conference rooms and corridors. The idea that we can create a complete universe that people can live in for a night or a week, what’s not to like?'

The building itself was designed by American architect Warren Platner in the 1970s. Originally designed as a luxury hotel, the building's brief was never fulfilled and it instead was occupied as office. Among these was a shipping company ‘Sea Container’ from which the building now draws its name. This maritime history and the Anglo-American relationship between Design Research Studio and Morgans Hotel Group, form the design inspiration for the project. Drawing on the theme of a transatlantic cruise liner for inspiration, Tom touched on the inspiration behind the hotel:

'We thought that the transatlantic liners of the golden period of cruisers was a fitting departure point, we wanted the rooms to have a feeling of a cabin, with everything fitted, compact and properly thought through. We made a massive intervention to the arrival sequence with a massive structure inspired by a ship’s hull piercing through from the outside canopy into the lobby and right through past the elevators into the restaurant, all clad with copper.'

The hotel opens to the public on the 30th of September, more information can be found on the Mondrian Website.

Find out more about Design Research Studio here.

Photography by Peer Lindgreen and Emily Andrews.