home Sharp End People Q: What projects are you working on at the moment and what do they involve? We are having our most successful year yet, with the start of five major projects, as well as the continuation of our large central London projects. Our most recent win is taking us to Jamaica, where we are designing a new resort on a site of more than 30ha, to include two hotels, a marina with retail, spa, championship golf course and sports facility. In Egypt, we will design a luxury country club with a hotel, spa and retail. Once again, we are working at the Savoy in London and continue to lead the multi-million pound refurbishment of Grosvenor House, the total refurbishment of the Intercontinental London at Hyde Park Corner, and the updating of the Franklin Hotel. Another new project this year is the world-famous Belfry Hotel and Golf Club in Warwickshire, operated by De Vere, with which we're also working in Spain to design the company's first overseas venture, the Roda Golf and Beach Resort. Q: What is ReardonSmith's greatest achievement? To date, this has to be the Cumberland Hotel in London, which reopened at the end of 2004 after a £95m rebuilding programme. We have been lucky enough to work in several of the world's most exotic locations as well as with a number of highly prized heritage buildings. The Cumberland, frankly, was neither. During the four year programme, the hotel passed through three changes of ownership, contracts changed, procurement routes changed, and we had fires and floods, but we worked through this to achieve a hotel that was true to its original concept. Q: Where do you believe is the up-and-coming hotspot, and why do you think this is? Well, hotel industry observers are busy this year tipping emerging Eastern European countries such as Montenegro, while Croatia and several of its neighbours continue to grow. In the Arabian Gulf, Oman and Abu Dhabi are steadily growing their tourism, several African countries are developing theirs and Turkey, it is said, is set to expand its luxury hotel provision. I would also add central London to the list of hotspots. In 15 years, I have never known a time when there hasn't been a queue of hoteliers looking for a property in central London and the 2012 Games may well make the queue even longer. Q: In your opinion, how is the hotel build industry faring at present? Extremely well, and our current portfolio reflects this as, I believe, do those of other architectural practices. It is interesting to see how world events that once would have had a negative impact on the industry barely cause a blip in hotel development any more – investors are taking a longer view. Also, hotels have once again become fashionable, on a par with their status at the beginning of the 20th century, and developers perceive the value of having a hotel as the epicentre of their mixed-use developments. Q: Are there any other hotel architects you admire? Two architects, for very different hotels. One is IM Pei for his design of the Four Seasons in New York, a superbly detailed building of monumental elegance that still inspires today, and Arne Jacobsen, for his design of the Royal Hotel, now an SAS Radisson, in Copenhagen. Q: What would ReardonSmith's dream job be? A new, sustainable resort with an owner sympathetic to the notion that site density is not the priority. |
| From FX Magazine Publication Date: July 2006 Back to the Press page |