Hotel Buildings in Liverpool -Through Old, Contemporary and Revamp-

How does the architecture of three different hotels vary in terms of appearance, style and materials and how are they all fit for the same purpose?

What appears in a person mind upon hearing the word 'hotel'?

The one thing most hotels have in common is their need to use space upwards; some more than others.

Yet, these functional requirements appear to be given in different forms in each of the following hotels. Since form follows function, I was interested to explore the variety of structures a hotel could take, constructed in different times of the present and past centuries.

Royal Insurance Building(1896-1980s) / Aloft Hotel (2014)

At the corner of Dale Street, the Aloft Hotel has recently re-furbished the building previously used as headquarters for the Royal Insurance Company.

A design competition was held by the former owner of the building, for the company's new headquarters. Seven Architects were invited and James Francis Doyle won. The building was used between 1903, when construction finished, and 1996, when the company abandoned the building which ceased to be used until recently.

Groundbreaking construction and design technology was involved at the time by the earliest instance of a self-supported steel frame office building in Britain. This allows the ground floor to be freed from columns. The external elevations are enriched by life-sized sculptural friezes by C.J.Allen.

Materials & Craftsmanship

Angle turrets resemble castle-like appearance promoting the idea of security

[endif]--Richly veined and coloured marbles from Greece and Dalmatia. Mahogany panelling to ground floor rooms. Walnut was used for the first floor leading to interior opulence. ![endif]--

Hope Street Hotel (2004)

Located on Liverpool's Georgian quarter on Hope Street. Resting on the shoulders of the London Carriage Works and the Blind School, this hotel functions as a dynamic interaction between the two. It was a recent addition by Falconer Chester Hall Architects in 2007, creating the first new facade on the street for 40 years. The Venetian palazzo standing as the London Carriage Works combined with the modern facade of the hotel. In my opinion, represents the street's constant architectural, stylistic evolution and cultural array.

The aesthetics of the distorted frameworks and slanted rooftop are obvious. Furthermore, the spaces presumably seek to channel users, via the structural projections created.

Adelphi Britannia Hotel (1914)

Located on Ranelagh Place, the century old facade of the Hotel is the third version. Existing from 1827, the existing hotel was designed in 1912 by R. Frank Atkinson, the same architect who designed Selfridges in London. The facades have similar characteristics by the architect, such as the Roman colonnades as well as the clean external stonework, obviously used to add prestige and royalty.

The first four floors have heavily marbled corridors, some rooms feature original wood-paneled walls and art deco bathroom fittings. Thus, it is clear that an opulent environment has been set up, from 1982 when many millions of pounds were invested by Britannia hotels.

This hotel, being the oldest in its league, is an original building structured for a hotel's purposes, with solid British comfort, refined through Venetian windows.

As the citizens walk by this street they are immediately taken by the grandeur of this palatial hotel which is exteriorly based on its abrupt, vertical vastness.

Comparison

Three different buildings fit for the same purpose. Whilst one of the buildings was originally designed for its final purpose, the other two refurbished older buildings and constructed in different centuries, one in a subtle interior re-arrangement and the other in a contemporary addition to the old, breaking the status-quo of symmetrical decorations into more minimal forms and harmonious materialism.

Conclusion

These miscellaneous buildings, yet similar in carrying out their function, all give a sense of a palatial structure in different eras, portraying, in all three cases, the feeling of imposing-ness upon standing on their doorstep. By observing the buildings' exterior, through the vertically-raised stone principle of architecture, we realise that a crowd of architectural elements compose it, which lift up high onto the top of the building in a 'violent' way, overcoming the main architectural purpose of the hotel, i.e. its sheltering.

In this fierce elevation of stone, the "purpose" seems to have faded somewhere along the way and nothing else is left to it other than anxious, upward lancing! This anxiety however translates into desperation for unnecessary exaggeration; otherwise we should pop the question of whether the power of a building's enormousness is what truly attracts the user. Is the breath-taking stance of a structure the secret ingredient to good urban architecture?

Ultimately, I find that this could be categorised in a psychological aspect of the spatial interactions of people and buildings versus their qualitative power, leaving alone the chance it is a way in which we vaguely fulfil our desires, as users, over these architectural solutions.

Bibliography:

-David Grahame Shane , Recombinant urbanism : conceptual modeling in architecture, urban design, and city theory.

-Nels Anderson : Urbanism and urbanization.

-George L. Hersey: Architecture and Geometry in the Age of Baroque, The University of Chicago Press, -Chicago and London, published in 2000.

-Aloft HOTELS Liverpool, North John Street Operating Company by Starwood Hotels, www.alofthotels.com

'hshhh'

-Hope Street Hotel Magazine, Issue 4,qritten by Mary Colston and Kate Foster.

-The Britannia ADELPHI HOTEL, Liverpool: "The story of a great undertaking" Booklet

Sharples J, "Liverpool" ,

-Pevsner, Nikolaus: Architectural Guides, Yale University Press