The existing building sits over a larger basement and at ground floor level contains a number of voids for access through to a rear service yard as well as a ramp down to the basement, all of which needed to be maintained during the demolition and construction. This presented a particular challenge and has resulted in the new structure being ‘threaded’ through to the basement level with the ground floor slab in situ.

The hotel building loads is supported on new piled foundations, which were coordinated to avoid the existing retained footings. The structural solution is an RC frame from the Basement up to 2nd-floor level where the hotel bedrooms level begins. Above second, the regular layout of the hotel bedrooms, tight site and the need to keep the frame as light as possible meant that the scheme is ideally suited to a cold rolled frame solution.

The second-floor level is a transfer slab, supporting the 9 storeys of hotel bedrooms, which were formed using a cold rolled steel frame solution.

As floors needed to be formed in concrete to suit acoustic and fire requirements, a panelised system where pre-fabricated walls were brought to site and then support a in-situ floor slab was chosen over a full modular solution.