Kensington Forum redevelopment | South Kensington | 102m, 77m | 30, 22 fl | Cancelled

I can't see the larger renders owing to the subscriber paywall but the image below doesn't look great, however SimpsonHaugh have a great track record, so I'll wait to see this properly. Even as a fan of Brutalist architecture, I think the current building is long overdue to be demolished and redeveloped - might have looked good elsewhere but hopelessly out of place in this location.

Here is the current building in all its ugly glory:

It's hard to see in the over edited images what an impact the replacement will be like. It's a pity from what I can see ( through the trees) that like most Simpson buildings lacks an understanding of context.
There is one consolation the building that's there at the moment is seriously ugly it will be hard to beat that.

danm said:

How?

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Looking again at the photos, I am probably being a little harsh (and it's not possible to have a full impression of the proposed new building). But the current hotel, for all its clunkiness at least has the look of purposeful design whereas the replacement looks like a bland collection of right-angles and not much else. Disappointing, to say the least.

Great, another large hotel is getting demolished for more residential units. It's the reality of the AirBnB era, in which there are more short-term apartment rentals than ordinary hotel room stays.

I guess a demolition and redevelopment is what the Holiday Inn London Kensington Forum gets for not having any Presidential, Royal, or Imperial suites like most other major hotels in the London area (But then again, I doubt any Holiday Inn in the world would have such suites).

With that said, I would be disappointed if the height of the new tower got shortened to below 85 metres.

gravesVpelli said:

"With that said, I would be disappointed if the height of the new tower got shortened to below 85 metres".

Why?

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Yes, why? This is a pretty residential neighbourhood and 85m is far too high. Perhaps if this building sat alongside the Barbican estate we'd say let it stay as it could be argued to be somewhat complimenting its setting, but alongside Victorian terraces and towering above neighbouring streets it doesn’t, plus I very much doubt you’d find much, if any local opposition to its demolition.

Perhaps this could be an ideal site for a new Crossrail 2 station, right alongside Gloucester Road tube and within a few hundred metres of the Natural History, Science, and V&A Museums, plus it isn’t in Chelsea which ought to count in its favour. The building could be compulsory purchased and a smaller hotel or offices could be build on top in keeping with its neighbours.

SW4 said:

Yes, why? This is a pretty residential neighbourhood and 85m is far too high.

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Well, the existing building has a height of 84 meters, and RetroSpecs suggested the height of the new building may be similar.

Retro Specs said:

It's only happening as the local council probably won't allow any high buildings outside of replacements for existing ones.

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Plus, there's every chance you shouldn't have allowed the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum Hotel to get built in the first place.

Regardless, the new buildings are probably going to have 1,000 residential units, and that's over 900 hotel rooms you're going to lose, anyway. I think there's going to be some new hotels coming up elsewhere in London that'll compensate for the loss of that many rooms.

This report on the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat's website points out additional reasons for the existing hotel's demolition:

Building owner Queensgate Investments and developer Rockwell said the 28-storey Seifert building had an outdated layout, was increasingly costly to maintain, had limited capacity for upgrading, and spoke a 'monotonous architectural language'.

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Architecturally I prefer the existing building to that very dull one proposed. At least it represented its era of heroic brutalism in its own way, and looks more interesting when viewed from its narrower angular sides - even if is not a great icon.

Perhaps the new design is more interesting internally, but externally its an uninteresting agglomeration of large rectangular volumes.

If nothing else, this must win the award for Worst Render Ever?...

The building is covered by trees, second one you can't even see the whole building, whilst the other two are of the gardens... :bash: