The Savoy - Restoration

Client: The Savoy Group
Year: 2000-2001

The Savoy Hotel embarked on its largest project in almost one hundred years, an extension which added 44 new rooms to this historic building.

The façade on Carting Lane originally finished at the 3rd floor level, while the new scheme designed by Lees Associates carried this up to the 6th floor.

The building required the development of complex new techniques in construction. The new exterior was clad in hand-finished glazed ceramic tiles, which were manufactured to obtain a match for the patina and range of hues of the original glazed bricks. The plans include the remodelling of the entire 2nd floor and parts of the existing 3rd, 4th and 5th floors of the south facing riverside block.

This further stage of development is part of on-going work at the Savoy by Lees Associates; eventually a total of 125 new rooms can be added to the hotel. The rooms are all designed to be individual. The bathrooms are finished using hand-selected book matched marble and mahogany panelling, complete with chrome fittings and accessories.

Lees Associates worked in conjunction with Timothy Jones of English Heritage and Rachel Hamilton of Westminster Planning Department to develop concepts which retained much of the earlier 1930s Art Deco styling so prevalent in the hotel.