London’s first “iceberg hotel” — with more space underground than above — is to open in the West End.
When it is completed next summer, the £500-a-night Londoner hotel in Leicester Square will be 30 metres high from pavement to rooftop but 32 metres deep from the ground to the sixth basement level.
In total, 51 per cent of the £300 million building will be below the tarmac of the West End’s home of cinema following one of the biggest subterranean excavations seen in the capital.
Iype Abraham, commercial development director of Edwardian Hotels, which is behind the development, said the company had been forced to dig so far down because of restrictions on the height of new buildings overlooking the National Gallery.
He said: “We wanted to create a boutique hotel that was grand in size but boutique in experiences and that meant we had to include various guest offerings. There was only one way to do that and that was to go down.”
The subterranean levels will have a ballroom accommodating up to 864 people sitting down, seven private meeting rooms, a spa, 15-metre swimming pool and gym, hair and nail salon, barber shop and two private screening rooms.
The lowest two levels will have offices, laundry rooms, staff rooms and machinery. Facilities above ground will include a whisky room, drawing room, public tavern and rooftop terrace restaurant. The hotel will have 350 rooms when it opens in June. The biggest penthouse suite will cost up to £10,000 a night and be 2,200 sq ft — about three times the size of a typical London home.
Edwardian, which partners the Standard’s Future London Culture City Project, also owns the May Fair hotel where guests have included Paris Hilton, left, and Peaches Geldof
Rooms carved out of fallen park trees
By Jonathan Prynn
Two “green” hotels for central London will set new standards for sustainability, it has been claimed.
The 1 Hotel London Mayfair will open in 2022 with 184 rooms and flooring made of fallen trees from London parks. Shower timers will encourage guests to use less water; rooms will have filtered tap water to reduce single-use plastic.
The second hotel, the Treehouse London, in Langham Place, Marylebone, opens on October 31 and was built using reclaimed wood. It features “second-life” products such as carafes made from wine bottles.
