Vine Hill

This complex scheme in the heart of Clerkenwell combines a 146-room hotel and new affordable housing block, supported by the sensitive refurbishment and extension of a Victorian Ragged School building to create 25,000 sqft of flexible workspace.

The eight storey hotel features a contemporary, but heavily textured, deep façade of folding case masonry piers. This play of shadows, angles, glass and pigmented stone is set against a view of the Ragged School's historic and distinctive crenelated tower, which itself acts as a pivot for a series of new publicly accessible external courtyards inspired by Clerkenwell's many tightly knit streets and alleys.

Completing the new tripartite composition of buildings is a tall, thin block of affordable housing which benefits from dual and triple aspect apartments with views over Clerkenwell. The building's 3-bay brickwork façade and articulated gable end is redolent of the Georgian terraced housing that used to line Eyre Street Hill on the eastern edge of the site.