Report - Scottish Life House - Newcastle - December 2013

[itscro]

This is a repost due to changing image hosts.

I pass this building on the bus every day and I started to feel like I should get it done. Had great fun scoping it out and finding access to various areas and had three visits in all. The internals are totally not worth the visit, completely gutted concrete voids and pillars, every floor the same. Some nice views from the roof although I didn’t manage to get up the big tower.

Scottish life house is a particularly brutalist piece of architecture built in 1973. An office block that housed among other things the NHS Business Services Authority and the Victim Support offices. Currently under redevelopment.

+3 Architecture have been commissioned by Jomast Developments to convert the former home of Newcastle City Council into a 4-star boutique hotel. Located in the north-east corner of Newcastle City Centre the new hotel will build on the existing range of leisure uses currently found at Scottish Life House to create a unique, leisure-based destination.
The scheme will contain 120 bedrooms and 24 suites designed to the highest standards for one of the world’s leading hotel brands and include a complete re-cladding of the existing building. New ground floor extensions will provide additional front of house facilities which will help to enliven and activate a new, shared-surface courtyard designed by landscape architects OOBE.
The existing buildings will be subject to comparatively minor interventions with the new bedroom module designed to work with the existing building structural grid. The external cladding will remain as a backing to the new rainscreen over-cladding which in many respects will give the hotel the appearance of an entirely new development. This new skin has been carefully designed to work with the interesting fenestration pattern but in all respects create a new aesthetic for the building. A vertical emphasis combines with a more sculptural form to transform the perception of the built form and the use of anodised aluminium and colour give the new hotel a distinctive character and personality within the fabric of the City.
This project forms phase one of a wider, comprehensive regeneration masterplan for the Scottish Life House estate which includes further refurbishment, new-build and public realm projects.