ADGE Hotel—a project Tzannes won through a Design Excellence Competition—is a boutique hotel set in the gritty, colourful and vibrant inner-city suburb of Surry Hills. Following the DA approval, the design was developed in close collaboration with Hutchinson Builders through an Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) process.
At ground level, new and existing elements are integrated to improve the hotel address and to activate the public domain. The new work includes a restaurant, café, hotel reception and back-of-house areas. Below ground level, five existing basement levels are extended to support the additional hotel accommodation. The hotel above ground level has been expanded by a total of 93 hotel rooms distributed across 10 floors.
The addition’s architecture integrates the existing masonry building and brings it into a rich, coherent whole. The base of the building, dressed in dark-coloured bricks, wraps around the development on three sides. The bricks at street level are polished to improve the building’s human scale and to enrich street experiences. Warm, light-coloured bricks delineate the base and complement the bricks of the existing hotel. The folding masonry form references the form of the existing hotel and includes landscape pockets to enhances urban and internal amenity. Using standard-sized bricks, the external corners of the folds are expressed with pigeonhole joints. The internal corners are joined with interlocking, uncut bricks. The result is a soft, woven façade with minimal wastage. Notched bricks further enhance the composition and accentuate the building’s verticality.
The addition improves the existing hotel’s efficiency and optimises the development potential of the property in alignment with principles of sustainable infill development. The architecture of the new hotel, which is of its place yet distinctive, refreshes the existing hotel and enriches the experience of Surry Hills.
