Diamond Shaped Hotel For City Road

Dean Nicholas
By Dean Nicholas Last edited 175 months ago

Last Updated 25 March 2010

Diamond Shaped Hotel For City Road

2503_diamondhotel.jpg

This 24-storey diamond-like boutique hotel will soon be blinging up the Old Street end of City Road, after Hackney council granted planning approval on Tuesday.

The hotel's facade, which architect Squire & Partners say is inspired by Bridget Riley's 1980s corpus, has a triple-glazed skin with a mosaic of panels that look glazed, translucent, or matte. Sitting within strutting distance of Old Street roundabout, the hotel will complete a triumvirate of (depending on your perspective) challenging or contemptible new buildings in the area, including the Bezier apartment blocks, and the planned Art'otel, which is itself another Squire & Partners project.

The new hotel sits on a location opposite Moorfields Eye Hospital, which could prove a bit of a legal headache when the lawsuits start flooding in from those delicate-of-retina patients blinded by the lambent reflections from across the street.