We’ve all experienced the Public Square. How about exploring the potentials of the Public Cube?

In the Urban Room project, our client is a hotel  that would like to create relatively cheap short term accommodation in central London. The building will be built over the Tower Hill Station. The site is actively used for cross walking between Fenchurch Street Station and famous Tower Bridge and Tower of London.

Although Tower Hill is known as a touristic destination, during the working hours the site still serves for the business people. On the left, you can see the different users like the London Underground user, hotel guest and the visitor in the same frame sharing the same plot in the plan but using the space completely different in the section. Three tubes of uses intersects and forms this “stone” like hotel building in the most historical and famous site of London.

It was very important in this project to create a frame – an edge for visitors, shop owners, hotel management to accommodate, allowing them to change and give characteristics to it in time. This is the reason behind the skin being uniform and pretty simple. In this project, the architect’s role is defining interesting and beautiful spaces with programme suggesting light and material qualities.

The aim is to create an almost puzzle like tension between the user and the designer. In this game, while architect dreams a space to be used in certain ways, he never limits the creativity of the user and does not underestimate the instincts of the building’s user. To do this, more than one circulation options are provided, openings like windows, doors are not built solid, a wall is a frame instead of a solid concrete boundary.