Planning permission granted for new four-star hotel in Glasgow City Centre
The consented design is a 250-bed, 124,000 sqft hotel next to St Columba Gaelic church in St Vincent Street, Glasgow, for the Vienna House brand.
Hawkins\Brown has secured planning consent for a 250-bed hotel in Glasgow city centre on behalf of Artisan Real Estate, who acquired the development site in the summer of 2019 further expanding their footprint in Glasgow with another high-quality regeneration opportunity.
The consented design for the site on the corner of St Vincent Street and Pitt St reinforces the line of two distinct character areas in the city: the Georgian and Victorian grain of the Glasgow Central Conservation Area directly to the east; and the much-changed late-20th Century cityscape immediately to the west. The hotel adds to the evolution of the area from a predominantly commercial office district to a thriving mixed-use quarter.
The public entrance of the four-star hotel is contained within a two-storey plinth at lower- and upper-ground level, incorporating a public restaurant, bar and conferencing facilities. The building respects the city’s grid pattern of urban blocks, with the structural mass of the building stepped back from the street in order to respect the street views to the neighbouring Category B listed St Columba’s Church. The form of the building works in partnership with a new landscaping scheme to establish an enhanced area of public realm on St. Vincent St, activating the streetscape and helping redefine pedestrian links around the site.
Glazed terracotta rainscreen cladding is proposed in three shades of green, set within an articulated limestone frame of double-height bays, making reference to the historic use of ceramics in Glasgow. The moulded terracotta panels work with the articulated limestone grid to create a play of light and shadow across the façade.
The building as a first, also achieves Glasgow City Council’s required Gold Standard for carbon reduction, with air source Heat pumps providing low carbon space heating and heat generation for domestic hot water. The proposal achieves a 38% improvement on the CO2 emission requirements of the Scottish Technical Standards and a 20% reduction in annual CO2 emissions via Low and Zero Carbon Generating Technologies.
To reference the traditional use of ceramics in Glasgow and some of the tones that characterise this tradition, there will be a varied palette of double-height green/teal/turquoise profiled terracotta cladding, set within an articulated limestone frame, to give this new building a bold and distinctive character, but one rooted in the context of Glasgow.
The building achieves Glasgow City Council’s required Gold Standard for carbon reduction, with air source Heat pumps providing low carbon space heating and heat generation for domestic hot water. The proposal achieves a 38% improvement on the CO2 emission requirements of the Scottish Technical Standards and a 20% reduction in annual CO2 emissions via Low and Zero Carbon Generating Technologies.
Work is expected to start one site in autumn 2020, with the hotel’s opening anticipated in 2023.
