The Lanesborough
The Lanesborough hotel at Hyde Park corner reopened in July 2015 after an extensive 18-month renovation. London-based ReardonSmith Architects worked closely with world-renowned interior designers, Alberto Pinto agency – as well as with teams of specialist craftspeople and engineering consultants – to re-create an extraordinary hotel. Alberto Pinto’s design has endured that The Lanesborough is, once again, not just a state-of-the-art ‘home from home’ for its international clientele but also a testament to the enduring quality of British master-craftsmanship.
For example, some 5,500 individual stencils were designed and applied to the once plain, panelled walls in the hotel’s 93 bedrooms and Library Bar. Using three hand-mixed colours, each stencil was applied to the panel, then layered with hand-painted highlights and finished with a dramatic shadow, or ‘flax’.
The hotel is illuminated by over 3 tonnes of chandeliers and wall lights, hand-blown in England and polished in Kent with more than 200 arms and 1,200 crystal parts. Some 740 LED lamps replace the original tungsten lamps throughout the hotel, helping to save in excess of 20 kilowatts of energy per hour.
The images seen here are from an edit of the finished project. Siobhán documented the full renovation over the hotels entire period of closure. You can find the full story in Siobhán’s Documentary folder here.
