Hotel, County Durham

The brief called for a new high quality country house hotel with distinctive reception spaces and a range of accommodation types from individual villas through to executive suites. The hotel also needed to provide substantial flexible conferencing spaces and an associated leisure suite.

The hotel is situated at the top of a beautifully undulating site, with sea views out over the top of the hills. Designed to feel like a contemporary grand formal country house, the hotel has a series of central reception spaces which are articulated differently to create a focus on the linear facade. The solidity of the facade then starts to fragment towards the outer edge as the bedroom suite accommodation gives way to individual villas with their own external spaces.

The public open spaces and conferencing facilities for the hotel are located behind the principal building, with the bedrooms and reception accommodation looking out over extensive gardens. Entry to the hotel is via a road to the rear, which comes underneath a covered canopy to the west at the rear entry. Given the potential for varied weather on the north-east coast of England, this would enable guests to keep protected from prevailing winds and rain as they arrived or left. The hotel complex runs horizontally across the site, approximately matching the existing site contours. The hotel links to a sloped south facing public square with access to the primary bar and restaurant locations. This square is flanked by the conferencing and leisure accommodation, creating a protected square off the primary route, and adjacent the hotel entry. The seaward aspect of the hotel has a series of formal walled and stepped gardens which gradually transition into a more informal country park landscape.

The brief called for a new high quality country house hotel with distinctive reception spaces and a range of accommodation types from individual villas through to executive suites. The hotel also needed to provide substantial flexible conferencing spaces and an associated leisure suite.

The hotel is situated at the top of a beautifully undulating site, with sea views out over the top of the hills. Designed to feel like a contemporary grand formal country house, the hotel has a series of central reception spaces which are articulated differently to create a focus on the linear facade. The solidity of the facade then starts to fragment towards the outer edge as the bedroom suite accommodation gives way to individual villas with their own external spaces.

The public open spaces and conferencing facilities for the hotel are located behind the principal building, with the bedrooms and reception accommodation looking out over extensive gardens. Entry to the hotel is via a road to the rear, which comes underneath a covered canopy to the west at the rear entry. Given the potential for varied weather on the north-east coast of England, this would enable guests to keep protected from prevailing winds and rain as they arrived or left. The hotel complex runs horizontally across the site, approximately matching the existing site contours. The hotel links to a sloped south facing public square with access to the primary bar and restaurant locations. This square is flanked by the conferencing and leisure accommodation, creating a protected square off the primary route, and adjacent the hotel entry. The seaward aspect of the hotel has a series of formal walled and stepped gardens which gradually transition into a more informal country park landscape.