Conran and Partners: Great Eastern Hotel, London and Sky Lounge, Tokyo

Our relationship with Conran & Partners is on-going; the first major project we worked on with the practice was the Great Eastern Hotel. We then went on to supply a collection of art for their ‘Sky Lounge’ project in Tokyo.

At the Great Eastern, the main concern for the architects was to commission works that picked up on key themes within their own designs and the refurbishment strategy of this large Victorian building. These themes comprised firstly the history of the hotel and its link to the railways and secondly its close proximity to the city of London.

These themes find expression in the major plaster relief sculpture for the lobby from the artist John Atkin. This piece runs the around the ceiling of the hotel lobby and measures approximately 30 metres in length by 2 metres in height. The work is specifically meant to evoke the moving parts of a steam locomotive

      

Plan went on to commission 300 limited edition photographic prints for the bedrooms. Here, the second of the two themes is apparent: the hotel selected four photographers, Keith Collie, Greg Williams, Max Jourdan and Christoph Klauke, to handle subtly different briefs to do with the life and architecture of the city of London in order to provide the hotel with a significant new collection of contemporary photography. The collection was used in the promotion and marketing of the hotel during opening.

Client Comments

"For the bedrooms at the Great Eastern Hotel, plan successfully presented, organised and framed and hung an excellent portfolio of commissioned photography, which was entirely appropriate to our design brief." Robert Malcolm, Project Architect, Conran and Partners.

Press

- Elle, Summer 2000: Hotels for Hanging In
- GS Magazine, Summer 2000: Picture Perfect
- Sleeper Magazine, September 2000: Photography in Hotel