Madrid-based architecture firm AQSO Arquitectos has proposed a twisted hotel in East London, featuring a checkerboard pattern that translates its strong language into the interior. 

Named Shoreditch Hotel, the 4,700-square-metre building will accommodate cinema and retail units which are divided by a public atrium at the rear side of the building. 

Giving a strong formal response to the site conditions with an alternative contemporary language, the hotel is located in the intersection of Old Street and Great Eastern Street in East London. 

"The ancient Roman street widens on the western side after crossing what is being called the Silicon Roundabout, the intersection of City Road, and opens the doors of Shoreditch at Haggerston," said AQSO Arquitectos.

"This junction is not only significant from the morphology of the urban fabric but also for becoming a regeneration catalyst in this old industrial area influenced by the City of London that has experienced an important creative and artistic boom," continued the studio.

Conceived to become a prow at the intersection, the hotel enhances the angle of junction responding to the urban views, but steps back at ground level to considerate and emphasize the cycling and pedestrian flow that crosses perpendicularly. 

The new hotel, featuring twisted facades from every perspective, creates a contrast with a regular arrangement of openings. By proposing an internal courtyard, the architects aimed at creating a discreet and enigmatic breach that becomes a secondary access point, bringing light into the enclosure and widening at the bottom to host the drop-off area. 

The architects placed the hotel rooms around an internal atrium that concentrates the vertical circulation of the building while the cinema and retail units occupy the rear of the courtyard, next to the party wall.

Arranged on a special structural system, the system directly responds to the geometry of the twisted facade, made of ruled surfaces along arches and straight lines. The outer shell is designed parametrically so that the architects can get a rational layout, allowing a consistent distribution of rooms and openings. 

3D exploded axonometric diagram

Ground floor and typical floor plan

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All images courtesy of AQSO Arquitectos

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