South Place Hotel

South Place Hotel is the first hotel in the D&D London portfolio, located in the heart of the City of London.  The eight storey luxury hotel was designed by architects Allies & Morrison to blend with the streetscape, resembling an office building.  Completed in 2012, this was the first purpose-built hotel to open in the Square Mile in 100 years, and is regularly rated as one of the best boutique hotels in London.

Conran & Partners were employed by D&D to design the hotel interior with a sophisticated city audience in mind.

The Requirement

Located on a narrow city street, the close proximity to other buildings meant that natural light was at a premium. The guest rooms had large windows and therefore blinds that provided privacy but simultaneously maximising the natural daylight were needed.

The Solution

Following detailed collaboration and discussion on the design with Conran & Partners, Waverley supplied and installed spring tensioned motorised ‘bottom-up’ dim-out blinds with ThetaBlock 40 fabric, mounted at cill level and operated by a wall mounted radio switch.  Combined with motorised wave curtains in Silent Gliss Colorama 1 fabric, these provide a relaxed yet refined atmosphere to the guest rooms which are described as having a ‘cool urban twist’.

The Outcome

The blinds can be raised to the required height for privacy, whilst allowing natural light into the room above the raised fabric.

The fabric is enclosed with side channels and the roller tube is concealed within a cassette. Both the side channels and the cassette are recessed into the window reveal so that the blind is invisible when not in use.  When fully raised, the blinds cover the entire window to provide complete room darkening.

Silent Gliss 5400 Motorised Curtain tracks (since replaced by the 5600 Motorised Curtain Track) with DrapeTech Wave Curtains were installed to guest rooms and also lounges and social spaces.  Silent Gliss Colorama 1 fabric was used for the Wave curtains to the guest rooms, while a variety of curtain fabrics were used elsewhere over the hotel including Edmund Bell Venus, Vescom Bedra, Vescom Etolin, Skopos Zephyr and Samos fabrics.

We also supplied and installed ShadeTech Timber Venetian Blinds to some areas and Silent Gliss 8600 Skylight System motorised shades to rooflights.

Sustainability was an important consideration from the outset of the design and the scheme was designed to achieve a BREEAM rating of Excellent.

What They Say

“We carefully crafted a sustainability strategy that responded to the project’s design and commercial constraints while achieving the demands of BREEAM Excellent.” – Hoare Lea

“We wanted to create an internal world that opened up to reveal lots of textural, vibrant and exciting layers.  The design of the guest rooms needed to respond to a well-travelled, well-informed business audience, with visitors coming in from many different parts of the world. The style presents a balance of luxury and comfort, with an elegant palette of materials” – Conran & Partners

“London is a busy place, even at weekends, and the following Sunday morning was a beautifully sunny day – but thanks to the blackout blinds and the general comfort we experienced in our room, we almost slept through breakfast.” – The Resident