SpaceInvader has completed the interior design scheme for new hotel brand Four Points Express by Sheraton in its first European iteration in London’s Euston. The commission included all the hotel’s rooms, public spaces and F&B offers, as well as all wayfinding design. The 211-bed hotel is operator Splendid Hospitality’s first venture with Sheraton owner Marriott International, and follows a £50million investment in the scheme, undertaken with co-developers Assured CMS and Dean Street Developments.

Brand Positioning:

New brand Four Point Express by Sheraton sits within the midscale hotel segment and is aimed at value-conscious travellers looking for a seamless experience in a convenient location with a focus on reliability, simplicity and value. The hotel – the former The County Hotel – is in a prime central London location on Bloomsbury’s Upper Woburn Place, less than 500m from Euston Station and 1km from Kings Cross and St Pancras International. It offers guests cosy rooms with a modern feel and a nature-inspired, botanical palette, taking inspiration from Bloomsbury’s parks and open spaces, as well as incorporating styling cues from the pocket of Georgian London immediately surrounding the property, with a bustling restaurant and bar concept and an onsite Caffé Nero for quick coffees, catch-ups or remote working.

Marriott International states that the new brand has been created in response to growing consumer demand for reliable-yet-affordable accommodation in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Consistent with the company’s approach to meeting the needs of guests with regionally relevant offers for every purpose of stay, the announcement follows the company’s recent move into the affordable midscale space with City Express by Marriott in the Caribbean and Latin America, as well as the announcement of its plans for StudioRes in the U.S. and Canada.

SpaceInvader in the hospitality market:

As well as this new project for Marriott International, SpaceInvader is currently working on hotel projects for Hilton, Radisson and Accor, building a strategic range of alliances with major hospitality operators and brands, with live projects across a number of major European cities in the UK, Germany and Malta. The agency’s hospitality portfolio also features one-off boutique hotels in historic properties, such as Wildes Hotel in Chester and Oddfellows on the Park in Cheadle, as well as a number of dedicated F&B projects within hotels, such as BLOK at Lanelay Hall, South Wales, currently

‘Hospitality is a very exciting sector for us right now’, John Williams, Founder and Director of SpaceInvader commented. ‘From the careful refurbishment and re-imagining of listed or historic buildings to the repositioning or revitalising of existing hotel stock and working with architects on interior schemes for hotels, we bring the same people-first, experience-rich and highly-detailed flair to our design work, for which we have won or been shortlisted for over 60 creative awards in the last decade.’

Design Approach and Inspiration:

The new hotel represents a complete revamp of the former County Hotel, which was stripped out for the new scheme by Glasgow-based architects Maith Design, who were tasked with improving and extending the bones of the original 8-storey property, including completely opening up and extending the ground floor space. SpaceInvader initially joined the project team to create new room design concepts, before their remit was extended to cover the interiors look and feel of the entire 3,926 sq m hotel.

The hotel’s layout now includes a lower ground floor, housing guest rooms, public cloakrooms and staff back-of-house spaces; a ground floor, containing the hotel reception, bar, restaurant, private dining / meeting room and back-of-house kitchen, with guest rooms located across the first to seventh floors.

When it came to the design inspiration, ‘We were very much inspired by the hotel’s Bloomsbury location and the surrounding area’ SpaceInvader Associate Imogen Woodage commented. ‘Woburn Walk’s elegant Georgian housing was a particular visual reference, with its exterior façades painted in a split monochrome treatment with black-painted ground floor retail units and white upper floors, together with Juliet balconies, featuring same wrought ironwork as the external streetlights. The inspiration from both Georgian exteriors and interiors on the new scheme was the first stylistic direction our designs took and includes the use of panelling and dado rails, as well as linear fabrics, which echo the lines and monochrome fashions of Georgian design.’

A second source of inspiration was the area’s local parks and squares, which translated into a botanical theme, with green and blues used as highlight colours to add to the monochrome base palette, as well as botanical-patterned wallpapers and extensive planting throughout. A third source was the novelist Charles Dickens, who lived locally and often strolled down Woburn Walk to buy tobacco.

‘Dicken’s inclusive approach to publishing, with his stories printed episodically as magazine chapters in order to reach a wider demographic, felt in tune with the new hotel’s reliable-yet-affordable positioning. The writer’s beloved pet raven, Grip, inspired the naming of the hotel restaurant – Raven – and the use of wallpaper featuring illustrations of birds, as well as some of the final set-dressing objects’ Imogen Woodage explained.

Design Walk-Through:

Reception Three informal reception pods, with a vertical fluting detail - made of bendy ply to create the shape with solid timber slats to dress the outside face - greet visitors on arrival in the reception area and introduce a vertical design treatment which links to the linear fabrics elsewhere in the scheme. The informality of the pods is also partly aimed at encouraging general public usage of the adjoining bar area.

Four Point Express by Sheraton’s signature brand patterns are introduced as soon as people enter the space, with the new dynamic pattern applied to the reception wall alongside the locality sign. This geometric, diagonal-line iconography also sits alongside SpaceInvader’s wayfinding in the hotel’s corridors. Framed artwork throughout, in the form of historic black and white photography of the local area, overlaid with the brand’s muted colour palette, was selected and provided by Spires Art.

A dado rail also features throughout the public spaces, running around the reception space and reception bar area, with the bottom half of the wall painted pale blue (taken from the corporate brand palette, though in a more muted tone) with neutral cream above - reflecting the Woburn Walk inspiration taken from the locality.

Bar & Glazed Link Area                 Two lounge seating set-ups are located directly opposite the reception pods, with additional perch seating arranged around a circular central column. The Caffe Nero area is to the right of reception, whilst a 12-cover curved bar over to the left has a green laminate and aged brass-coloured metal tile front, echoing the shape of a bird’s wings, plus a stone counter, with bar seating alongside and pendant lighting above.

To the top left of this series of flowing spaces is the new extension area leading to the restaurant, which features low-level, rounded-edge banquette sofas in four facing sets. These are joinery pieces specially-made for the project and feature timber for the external surrounds, main structure and legs, plus upholstered seat backs in a blue velvet sourced from Sunbury, faux leather seat pads and textured fabric soft cushions. Artwork on the wall to one side is faced by mirrors with radius corners on the other to reflect light and create interesting glimpses and vistas for guests using the bar.

The banquette booths offer some privacy in this circulation/connecting area for those who wish to be more sealed off, whilst a continuous, right-angled counter with high seating is situated alongside the glazed windows – featuring a crittal-style grid treatment - so that people can also face outwards onto Woburn Walk. Vertical grid tiling clads the remainder of the wall below the window. This area also features Amtico patterned LVT floor tiling, adjoining a timber flooring section for the booth seating, as well as a half-height wall finish, planting and delicate pendant lights (Matt Opal glass with brushed brass from Chelsom Lighting) over the window area - the same light as used over the adjacent bar counter.

Restaurant Entry into Raven, the 66-cover restaurant named in honour of Charles Dickens’ pet raven, is either directly from the main entrance or via the bar area. To the restaurant’s rear is a long buffet counter for breakfast, located directly adjacent to the kitchen. The hot counters are to the left and cold to the right, with optional heating underneath. A third iteration of the Amtico patterned tiled flooring runs the length of the counter approach area and continues up the short stair that leads to the kitchen and private dining area. Nine pendant lights are also arranged over the buffet – the Penny Bronze light with Oyster Fabric from Chelsom Lighting.

In terms of seating arrangement, there needed to be a mix of fixed covers and smaller tables for flexibility, able to be grouped together or to stand apart. A central row of tables is arranged at 90 degrees to the others to break up any feeling of uniformity. Existing nooks are used for booth seating, with one at the rear, adjoining the buffet counter, set behind a protective outer timber shell. The banquettes are upholstered in green velvet with faux leather seat pads. Other seating features green fabric upholstery also, with rattan backs. There are four different types of freestanding chairs overall to give the restaurant a boutique feel, with backs either in rattan or upholstered in a flecked material or, once again, a linear, Georgian-style fabric.

The ceiling grids had existing beams which had to be rebuilt during the redesign. Three new  grids now reflect the seating layout below, with acoustic panels incorporated and featuring Georgian-style beading, including a radius edge. Inset LED lights feature lap the perimeter edge of each grid.

The restaurant’s tabletops are all in laminate with some featuring reverse bevel edges. Stacking wall tiles above the buffet counter are another aspect of the linear symmetrical element of the scheme. Crittal bi-folding doors with glazing above announce the private dining area, located up the same small stair that leads to the kitchen. The doors to the private dining space can also be fully opened for breakfast overspill during peak busy times and used as a bookable meeting space when needed. Inside, a ten-person table and chairs are arranged on a raised platform. The interior features a soft colour palette with textured wallpaper, whilst a central pendant light – the Opal White from Muuto - hangs over the table. An inset carpet by Ege beneath the table grounds the furniture arrangement.

Lift lobbies and Corridors

Working with the existing space meant corridor ceilings at a 2.2m height, so that the design for the hotel’s corridors and doors had to be very simple and unfussy.  The corridors feature a carpet by Ege offering a sense of movement and linearity, whilst a simple elevation is created by dark grey skirting boards and architraves. In the lift lobby, the brand graphic is a signature item applied a large scale in the brand’s tonal blue, with wayfinding signage in sprayed acrylic. Bedroom doors are kept simple with softly-illuminated room numbers in a stacked style to elevate.

Guest and public cloakrooms are included on the lower ground floor for bar and restaurant users, with a male, female and accessible toilet. The treatment for all three is a monochrome tiled floor with stripe effect wall tiles. Vanity units are in grey stone with radius-edge mirrors and rounded edge wall lights above.

Rooms

Bedroom doors are made up of simple laminate panels with room numbers in a stacked style to elevate the look and feel. 

The room concept features a stripped back monochrome palette with botanical feature areas and Georgian inspiration for the detailing, including a black and white linear fabric for the headboards, dark grey skirting boards and mouldings framing the mirror and wall hooks. As the rooms are compact, a laptop tray is provided instead of a desk, although there is also a welcome shelf visible on entry, providing tea and coffee, which can also double up as a small desk and which has a foldable stool hanging directly beneath. A further space-saving storage solution is a carved-out under-bed storage area. The colour scheme for the rooms is made up of soft tones to enhance a feeling of space and calm.

Old-fashioned dials are used for the safe unit and the toilets feature grey freestanding vanity units and black accent accessories, working with the dark architraves. Beds are varied in location, with some at 90-degree angles to others, with wallpaper and textured surrounds to ensure the rooms feel warm and more homely. A dado rail with an LED light also creates a cosy nook effect around the bed. The paint finish above the wallpaper continues up to the ceiling to enhance the space and create continuity. Cushions are in a yellow from the brand colourway, but lighter tones once again, with the colour yellow also featuring as a muted overlay on the local photography artwork, the hanging stool and wall hooks, arranged in the same dynamic pattern seen behind main reception, but at a much smaller scale.