THE YORK HOTEL CONVERSION

CLIENT:

BERKELEY HOMES PLC

ARCHITECT:

GEOFFREY REID/SAUNDERS PARTNERSHIP

CONTRACTOR:

SINDALL CONSTRUCTION LTD

PROJECT VALUE:

£70M

DATE COMPLETED:

1998

This project consisted of a major refurbishment to this famous hotel built, originally, in 1914. The building had been the subject of various conversions over the years and in recent times had been used as a hostel for medical staff working at the nearby Middlesex Hospital. Berkeley Homes considered the building ideal for conversion into luxury residential accommodation.
PTA’s involvement consisted of extensively altering the skeleton of load bearing masonry economically and efficiently. An example of this is PTA’s success in convincing the District Surveyor of the wisdom of retaining the load bearing clay pot walls. Although these existing clay pot walls had performed reasonably adequately over the years, there was no other example in modern day use to act as criterion with which to compare the completed refurbishment. The client’s original consultant required the internal demolition and complete re-construction by new RC framework with PTA’s initiatives so several £million of increasing re-construction expense was avoided.
PTA set about this challenge by researching and testing the clay pots by simulating the actual load bearing conditions. The retention of these inherited structural membranes resulted in a significant saving in costs.