Nottingham Civic Society - Mark of the Month Commendation April 2003

HART’S HOTEL, NOTTINGHAM

Hart's Hotel is a 34-bedroom ‘townhouse’ hotel on a complex and controversial site overlooking the Park in Nottingham. The Park is Nottingham's most celebrated Conservation Area and a Victorian housing development of great quality and presence below and adjacent to Nottingham Castle.

When the client, Tim Hart, purchased the site it contained on it a derelict villa c.1830 in extremely poor condition. The villa, however, was on the register of buildings of local interest and a number of previous applications on the site had been turned down because they included the demolition of the existing building.

The client's brief called for the demolition of the existing building and the creation of a new hotel which would have a close relationship in use to his existing, award winning, restaurant adjacent.

The site is also surrounded by a number of well preserved listed buildings and is set at the top of Park Steps, an extremely interesting and unusual landscape feature leading into the Park and giving an excellent view of the Trent Valley from the top. Research into the history of the site led to the discovery that its boundary was that of the original outer bailey of the castle and that the existing road into the site passed through what had originally been the location of the Postern Gate.

The practice took a carefully contextualist approach to the project, establishing the important views to be retained and developed and looking at how the new building and the spaces it created around it could be related to the important listed buildings and the more recent developments adjacent. Because the site was also so prominent from the Park itself, the composition of the new building in its hillside context was also carefully considered in relation to the Park edge generally.

The design concept that was developed was based on a three-wing pinwheel plan arrangement, which informs both the internal and external organisation of the building and its site. The first wing, which faces south over the Park contains the hotel reception and a number of guest rooms and is a similar scale and form to the listed Georgian terrace to the West. It also has a face looking East into a new courtyard which forms the hotel entrance and gathers two other listed buildings, the Tower House and the Park Gatehouse into a composition around it, giving place and space to the original buildings and an impressive and welcoming entrance to the Hotel. The second wing faces southwest and takes the form of a long articulated block grouping rooms around larger scale brise-soleil and giving them all a magnificent view across the valley and into the hotel's private south facing garden. The two wings mentioned above are both 4 storeys to make the most of the aspect and relate carefully to other buildings on the Park edge. The third wing is only three storeys high, allowing views of the Tower House from within the new housing development beyond and relating to the scale of the existing ‘Hart's Restaurant’, which it stretches out towards.

The junction of the three wings internally is the focus of the hotel and contains its main entrance and circulation spaces. On entering the hotel one immediately gets a magnificent view over the Park and this is reinforced at every lift and stair landing on the route to the rooms. The plan is arranged to get the maximum number of rooms with excellent views and daylit bathrooms. It also relates the brasserie/bar closely to the existing ‘Hart's Restaurant’ and gives the bar the possibility of being accessed without entering the hotel proper. A modest amount of guest parking was required in the brief and this is provided at the lower level of the site extending the existing car park-building relationship of the adjacent development.
The construction is steel frame, pre-cast concrete floors and solid blockwork walls to give fast construction, but reliable soundproofing. The exterior is rendered in an insulating render system in three shades of grey and the roof finished in standing seam stainless steel to give a cool coordinated appearance easily able to relate to the listed buildings adjacent. Design commenced on the building in January 2001 and the project was handed over in April 2003. The contractor is still carrying out snagging work. The cost of the project was £2,700,000.

The client has benefited by commissioning what in his own words is ‘an extremely glamorous building at a very affordable cost’.

Marsh Grochowski Architects