To refresh a retail unit on one of the City’s busiest shopping streets and reclaim an unused building above, delivering an apart-hotel in collaboration with the operators interior design team.

The scheme is targeting BREEAM ‘Very Good’

This is a complex building of varying floor levels having been connected and remodelled numerous times in it’s lifetime. A considered scheme to reconnect the floor plans was required to deliver an integrated scheme with clear and legible circulation.

Previously being used solely for retail use, large sections of the building's upper levels have remained unused for many years and as a result, have deteriorated into a poor condition.

The ground and basement levels of the building are to be retained and refurbished for retail use, meaning a creative design approach was necessary to overcome the challenge of providing the required access on a dense inner-city site.

The existing building sits within the Central Shopping Conservation Area of York, and therefore requires a sensitive approach to design.

Our design will repurpose unused space in a prime city centre location, ensuring valuable accommodation with new lease of life, re-animated the street frontages and embracing the building's heritage assets.

A new circulation core connecting the varying floor levels of the two blocks and a roof terrace situated within what was previously an area of inaccessible roof space, contributes to a delicate and discrete intervention connecting the existing upper levels and offering a calm, outdoor terrace environment in which guests can relax away from the bustling streets beyond.