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Park Tower Hotel 

Welcome to our Community Hub to display an overview of our proposals for the Park Tower Hotel.

We look forward to receiving your feedback and sharing further details throughout the process.

Proposals

Learn more about our exciting plans

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The anticipated project milestones
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Park Tower Hotel

Proposals

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Proposals

Welcome

Welcome to our Community Hub to display an overview of our proposals Park Tower Hotel.

We appreciate you visiting our consultation website and sharing your views on the proposals to deliver a significantly improved public realm that will be attractively landscaped and will offer new opportunities for retail, restaurants, and cafes. Additionally, the proposal will comprehensively refurbish the hotel, and create a better proportioned building.

The Building Today

The site comprises the Park Tower Hotel, located on the south side of Knightsbridge, bounded by William Street to the east, Lowndes Square to the south, and Seville Street to the west. Parts of the ground floor, fronting Knightsbridge, are in use as a casino and a restaurant. To the south of the site, fronting Lowndes Square, is the hotel’s main entrance.

The site is not listed nor is it located within a conservation area. It is adjacent the Hans Town Conservation Area (RBKC) to the west and Albert Gate Conservation Area (Westminster) to the north and east. It is also visible from nearby Belgravia (Westminster) and Knightsbridge (Westminster) conservation areas and within the settings of various listed buildings.

Knightsbridge/ Seville Street corner view Knightsbridge

View along Seville Street

View along William Street, including across ramp

Opportunities for Improvement of the Consented Scheme

The proposed development intends to significantly improve on the current building, in addition to providing enhanced benefits compared to the scheme for the Park Tower Hotel that was approved in January 2020 (RBKC reference PP/19/05840).

These benefits include:

  • Contribute more substantially to the public improvement in the wider area.
  • Maximise active frontage all around the site.
  • Increase public access and retail offer, in particular along Knightsbridge, Seville and William Street.
  • Deep retrofit of retained existing structure aims to deliver exemplary sustainable design targets, moving towards net-zero embodied carbon, lowest operational carbon, and circular economy construction.
  • Complete renovation of the hotel offer and experience.
  • Substantially reduced car parking and vehicular traffic, and so improving servicing arrangements.
  • Enlivened two-storey podium with active frontages, public art display, public facing uses and green roof.
  • Increased scale of proposed podium complements scale of surrounding buildings.
  • Knightsbridge elevation extends footfall eastwards, beyond Harvey Nichols.
  • Enhanced hotel offer and amenities benefit the area and local residents.
  • Opportunity to introduce residential use in the vertical extension.
  • Sustainable development measured against embodied carbon, in-use carbon, biodiversity, urban greening, thermal performance and energy key targets.

Key

  1. Optimised podium scale and street presence
  2. Increased podium openness and active street frontage
  3. Improved biodiversity and urban greening with podium roof and street landscaping
  4. Upgraded hotel offer and part change of use to residential accommodation; remodelling of tower to improve proportions and termination.

Design Proposal - Podium Remodelling and Extension

Existing Podium

Fragmented Podium

Proposed Podium

Unified Podium

Public Realm Enhancement

Overall, the proposals will result in considerable public benefits, including:

  • Opportunities for additional retail and food & beverage at street level that will significantly enhance activity especially along William Street, benefiting existing shops and cafés.
  • Improvements to the impact of the hotel servicing with the removal of the ramp on William Street.
  • Substantial reduction in vehicular traffic due to the removal of the existing public basement car park.
  • Significant improvement to the context, setting and appearance of the building with an elegant, contemporary colonnade framing a new active, friendly and inviting street frontage.
  • Opening up active retail/food & beverage uses with glazed frontages along Knightsbridge and down the sides along Seville and Williams Street, extends the pedestrian flow to the east, addressing the present issue of ‘dead frontage’ east of Harvey Nichols.
  • Improved quality of public realm with public art display, greenery and lighting.
  • Opportunity to work with local artists and craftsmen to embed art into the fabric of the façade and transform the shell of the podium into an exhibition space.
  • Greening opportunity in the landscaped podium roof terrace to introduce a mix of plant species that promotes biodiversity.
  • Improved planting around the hotel entrance on Lowndes Square, Knightsbridge and William Street with a selection of species to enhance visual appearance, biodiversity and natural amenity in the public realm.

01.
William Street view

02.
Knightsbridge view

03.
Lowndes Square view

Design Proposal

Design Proposal: Albert Gate

Design Proposal: Knightsbridge

Podium Proposal: William Street

Design Proposal: Knightsbridge

Sustainability

The project aims to reuse the existing building and make sensitive improvements that will extend the building’s life and enable operational carbon reductions. As such, we have sought to undertake, and make use of, the following:

  • Conduct whole life carbon analysis to identify carbon hotspots and potential alternative approaches.
  • Circular economy principles – reuse of materials and manage additional environmental impacts (adoption of GLA circular economy approach, in addition to further circular economy principles).
  • Remove the current car park (bar blue badge provision).
  • Promote the site’s central location that is within walking and cycling distance of a variety of services and facilities, including Knightsbridge Underground Station (Piccadilly Line – providing connections to Heathrow, the TfL network, and National Rail Services), and frequent bus services (Routes 9, 52, 452 & N9) providing direct routes to various destinations across London.
  • Provide ample cycle parking facilities along with showers and change rooms.
  • Increase biodiversity by creating a network of green spaces linking Hyde Park to Lowndes Square through William Street, create a garden that will provide a habitat for different varieties of flora and fauna, and investigate how to connect the site to the bee highway, in addition to delivering a landscaped roof terrace.
  • Increase the site’s density and extend the life of the existing building by conducting a deep renovation and retrofit.
  • The energy performance of the existing building will be significantly improved through alterations to building fabric and plant upgrades.
  • Removal of fossil fuel energy sources so that the building will become decarbonised.
  • Achieve BREEAM Excellent certification for the hotel (assessed using the BREEAM 2014 RFO+NC bespoke scheme).
  • Mitigate climate hazards by implementing appropriate mitigation measures, in line with the relevant BREEAM requirements.

BREEAM

CLIMATE MITIGATION

WHOLE LIFE CARBON

GREENED PUBLIC REALM

CIRCULAR ECONOMY

DEEP RETROFIT

TRANSPORT LINKS

CYCLE STORAGE

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About Us

Stanton Williams is a London based design studio that has gained international recognition for its thoughtful and innovative approach to sensitive sites and complex, ambitious projects.

The studios’ work demonstrates a commitment to place people at the forefront of the agenda and to create sustainable, resilient spaces that respond to their cultural, social and physical context.

Stanton Williams’ portfolio has expanded from an initial focus on the arts to encompass a wide range of projects at different scales; and the quality of our work has been recognised with over 150 major awards, including the RIBA Stirling Prize for the Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge, and the RIBA Award for International Excellence for the Musée d’arts de Nantes.

Royal Opera House, London, UK

60 Sloane Avenue, London, UK

Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge, UK

Lipton Rogers, Development Manager,
on behalf Drift Properties Ltd.

DP9
Planning Agent

Montagu Evans
Townscape Consultant

Arup
Sustainability Consultant

Millerhare
Graphic Design Consultant

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Timeline

Early 2024

Target Application Submission

Early 2024
Mid 2024

Target Planning Permission

Mid 2024
c. 3 Years

Construction Time

c. 3 Years
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Have Your Say

Thank you for viewing our proposals for the new development. We appreciate you taking the time to visit our community hub and would be grateful if you could complete this feedback form.