Park Tower Hotel

Lambasted by the Architectural Review for being amongst a glut of brash hotels jostling for consumers attention in the early 1970s, the 18 storey cylindrical mass of Park Tower has almost come good. Not close to the quality of Seifert’s Space House, but sharing its shape, this ‘stack of bedrooms’ appears less crude than its orthogonal counterparts and its period form slightly more enduring. Alongside later development its height now seems modest and its plan must be fit for the contemporary market as it is subject to refurbishment to designs by Darling Associates. Its modular modelling using projecting window bays also gives it more character than the flush curtain walling used on other hotels at the time and is now a fairly amenable retro feature that can be ably marketed. As a gesture to the surrounding buildings of Lowndes Square, the tower is topped with a rather apologetic cornice that is more of a ‘sorry, not sorry’ than a sincere remark. The base carries diluted Seifert motifs in the angular geometry of the precast cladding panels and a recess between the podium and the tower permits a glimpse of the tapering structure and the cylinder to be read as a separate volume. As Seifert’s work is reappraised, and amidst a wave of appreciating embodied carbon, it is a positive that this building will continue to cast its stunted shadow across Knightsbridge.