Hodder + Partners won an architectural competition organized by Olympian Homes in November 2011 to design a 330 bed hotel with bar and breakfast facilities for Motel One, a German hotel operator with a philosophy to provide a high quality hotel product at an affordable price.
Located just outside the Whitworth Street conservation area, the site facing Manchester’s Piccadilly Station, wraps around a public house on the corner of London Road and Whitworth Street. Argent Estate’s recent Piccadilly Place development is located to the north and west of the site and the Grade II * listed London Road Fire Station is situated directly to the south on the opposite side of Whitworth Street.
A significant design consideration was to reconcile the significant scale differences between the buildings that surround the site at the same time as providing
Motel One Manchester an appropriate backdrop to the listed Fire Station. The site is in a prominent position and the building has been deliberately designed as a foil to the Fire Station. Volumes are intentionally clean and elemental in their form, the facade rhythms repetitive and the palette of external materials – honed concrete and bronze anodized aluminium – is restrained and calm.
The proposals help enhance the corner of London Road and Whitworth Street by closing the corner left open by Piccadilly Place in a way that, through the scale and massing of the proposals, helps stitch together the very different buildings that surround the site.