By Katherine Price
Multiple hospitality establishments in recent years have shown that approaching refurbishments, fit-outs and interior design with sustainability as a priority doesn’t mean sacrificing style, such as Chantelle Nicholson’s Apricity, Doug McMaster’s Silo and the Conduit private member’s club.
Following the news last month that we are now set to exceed the key 1.5C global warming threshold within the next five years, it’s vital that operators consider the environmental impact of their projects from the beginning, before they even open.
Since 2019, Inhabit has been showing what can be achieved with sustainable hotel design at its first 88-bedroom property in London’s Southwick Street and a second, 158-bedroom property in nearby Queen’s Gardens, which opened a year ago.
“It was all about creating a home away from home and trying to get guests to engage with one another as well as the hotel engaging with its own community,” says Richard Holland, co-founder and director of east London architect and design studio Holland Harvey, which worked on both projects.
“If the first hotel was our research and development opportunity, on the second hotel we could really turn up the volume on some of those ideas and the narratives we created on the first.”
The greenest building is the one that already exists
Both properties were heritage buildings and starting with an existing property, points out Holland, means that in terms of your embodied carbon, you’re already starting from a very good place. As Carl Elefante, former president of the American Institute of Architects, said: “The greenest building is the one that already exists.”
The biggest environmental impact of a building is its MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering), says Holland, so these choices have the potential for the biggest impact when investing in a site, whether that’s switching to renewable electricity, establishing grey water recycling, adding rooftop solar panels, or creating heat recovery systems.
“If you’ve got a hotel of 200 bedrooms and there are two guests staying in each, that’s 400 showers every day, so you’re got 400 times X number of litres of water at 65 degrees, which currently in most hotels is flushed straight into the sewer, so we’re heating our sewers. That’s crazy,” explains Holland.
“There are systems that you can put in place to pump that heat back into the building. There are quite a lot of techy ways of immediately reducing your building’s operational carbon.”
Rethinking ‘waste’
During the renovation process of the second Inhabit hotel, all ‘waste’ materials were redirected from landfill, with 59% recycled or donated via Globechain. The process saw the hotel’s F&B space moved from the basement to the ground floor to try and make it more appealing to the local community as well as hotel guests.
Plasterboard was recycled, and Liverpool-based Granby Workshop reconstituted marble, brick and other materials that were stripped out during refurbishment into a terrazzo fireplace for the reception area.
“It’s a talking point and it makes people consider waste differently, and not to see waste as something you throw away, but as an opportunity and a raw material,” says Holland.
The Ege carpets, meanwhile, were made from recycled plastic bottles and fishing nets, while every carpet tile has the company’s contact details on the back. When they eventually need replacing, Ege will collect the old tiles and turn them back into raw materials.
Robust thinking
It’s also about choosing robust items with longevity in mind, says Holland, especially for hospitality environments which must endure more use and footfall than residential spaces. Instead of veneer, for instance, wooden surfaces can be more easily sanded down and repaired, giving them a longer potential lifespan. And what does the end of life for that product look like?
Social enterprises and small, socially conscious businesses were prioritised as suppliers for the hotels, such as candle-maker Self Care Co; salvaged material homeware and accessories company Be For Change; Belu Water; and Who Gives a Crap. Furniture was sourced from Goldfinger, which offers apprenticeships to marginalised young people.
Although the interior design of Inhabit is very minimalist and Scandinavian-inspired, Holland highlights that it’s just as possible to create a maximalist, brightly coloured space with this approach.
“There’s nothing to say we couldn’t have gone for a very different aesthetic but still have achieved the same standards in terms of environmental and social impact. You have to divorce style and trend from ESG because they’re mutually exclusive things,” he says.
“The more stuff, the more carbon, the more environmental impact, but that’s not to say that stuff couldn’t be made by amazing social enterprises. You can create whatever aesthetic you’re trying to achieve and still do it in a way that is thoughtful and conscious of our planet.”
Stories enrich the guest experience
The hospitality operator can then communicate these stories and decisions to guests. “Every single touchpoint has a story to tell,” says Holland. “That just enriches the guest experience, because it feels meaningful, it feels like you’re part of a bigger story.”
Despite this, he says that the biggest challenge is getting client buy-in, with the assumption that a sustainable approach is going to be more expensive, which isn’t necessarily the case.
“Specifying the materials and designing the spaces, that’s the easy bit. It’s getting people to see the value in it and commit to the ideas,” he says.
The Inhabit projects, he argues, worked because they were a partnership between everyone involved. “It requires that spirit of everybody rolling up their sleeves, committing to the idea and just making it happen,” he says. “It has to be something you commit to wholeheartedly.”
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