John McRae: That must be Mr Taylor!

David Taylor: It is Mr Taylor! How are you? It's almost like you were going to say: ‘I've been expecting you, Mr Bond…and looking at your phone number, it ends in 007 so it would be highly appropriate for that to be the case…!

JMc: (laughs) Yeah, hopefully I will be shaken but not stirred!

DT: (laughs) So, hello, and congratulations on winning the NLA Award in the Welcoming category for The Standard. First of all, how did that feel when you heard - I mean, it's got lots of awards so far – and secondly, what is the main thing you think you've learned from that project?

JMc: Firstly, thanks very much David, for inviting me to join you for the five minute catch up. Yeah, we’re absolutely delighted with the NLA award. The Standard, as you say, has been getting a lot of coverage and I think rightly so. I don't mean that just from an architectural point of view. I think it's a great place to be. We've had lots of really good feedback – I think the thing that I've learned is that our instincts about keeping buildings, our intuition around it, I think it has paid off. Crosstree Real Estate partners, who are the owner of that building as we mentioned before, were the only bidders to want to retain the building. Between us, we recognise that the building was unloved and I think it's been completely repositioned to move it from what was termed a background building to being a foreground building. Buildings such as The Standard can be a catalyst for the reinvention of areas – that building really is a destination…lockdown permitting! 

DT: It strikes me that one of its major successes is the devotion of a lot of its space to public space. That is, you don't have to be a Standard Hotel room occupier to enjoy the place. Do you think that is something that's going to become more prevalent, and especially perhaps since the arrival of COVID-19?

Orms, The Standard © Timothy Soar

JMc: I think I completely concur with you. Part of the hotel being a destination is its ability to interact with many members of the public. Whether you are a guest or whether you're merely there between meetings, it has an offer in which it welcomes all. I think that is the key thing, especially being on that south side of the Euston road. That particular building faces a lot of redevelopment on the North side and so that ability to create somewhere that people want to go to and to stay in and to keep coming back is a really important thing. 

There's a lot of outdoor space on the ground floor of The Standard. You will have seen that a lot of the perimeter ground floor windows are sash and case so they can be opened up. The spaces are really flexible, so having the ability to open up the building - be inside, be outside, have air movement through the spaces, being able to socially distance…

I've actually been there since the first lockdown, and they handled it incredibly well. They’ve been following the guidelines but it didn't feel as though you were being sterilised, if you know what I mean? It’s still a really warm welcome and I think that's a really difficult thing to do in these times.

DT: Now, obviously the hotel sector’s been very heavily hit in this period in terms of room occupation. You've just got permission for your conversion of the old Central St Martin’s site for a hotel complex – I'm just wondering, has this changed at all the way you think about how that may operate in future? Or are you just projecting further into the future for when hopefully a vaccine is available and we are back to ‘normal’?

JMc: The former Central St Martin’s site is the second hotel that we will have worked on following The Standard. It's interesting you picked up the destination and the openness of The Standard. Camden, for that particular site, were after a rich mixture of uses because they wanted to create and establish a new identity for that area. And part of it was about drawing on its cultural history as the centre for arts education. Most of this design was, I would say, about 80-90% done ahead of Covid. We worked on it alongside a company called Hotel Hussy. We said at the time the build-out programme for that particular project is going to be circa four years; the idea of creating a hotel brand now that would be relevant in four years’ time is pretty impossible, because essentially it will be out of date before it even opens. What we ended up doing was: we instead created a vision and set of values for the sites. And that was really to inform what the DNA of the hotel will be.

Orms, The Former Central Saint Martins © Timothy Soar

But also, to help act as a guide and really to create and deliver every aspect of the project. That is from design and build through to the partnerships and the operation of the building as it comes online. That’s been hugely important, because yes, we could say we designed it for Covid, but in four years’ time I jolly well hope Covid will have disappeared to wherever it came from. But we may face a different pandemic so I think we've been trying to keep the design moving. The operation philosophy will evolve so we didn't want to be too rigid, too early.

From the research that we did we looked at a couple of examples: COMO The Treasury hotel in Perth, Australia and we looked at the Ace Hotel in LA. Both of those examples had taken principles of public buildings and public areas and applied them to hotels. This idea of creating flexible, open, adaptable spaces to all has actually been what has underpinned our design thinking so far. We know that this thing is going to evolve; we know it's going to change - it may have to address a whole series of new challenges in the next couple of years, but the underlying values and vision has been set out. And basically, our vision is to create an inclusive public space for both London locals and visitors and the idea is to connect them with the ideas and businesses and each other. That's the vision that we set out.

Yes, there are some parallels you could argue with The Standard, because the ground floor does a lot of those things, and I think what we are seeing especially in this particular scheme is that we're going to have cultural spaces; we're going to have events spaces; we’re going to have affordable housing; we're going to have different types of bedroom layouts. But the real key of this project has been the mixture of uses across the entire ground floor of the site. So: there will be a new courtyard. We’re reinstating the rear of the Lethaby building, which was lost in one of the world wars, and we are reinstating the original lecture Theatre in the Lethaby building, creating a screening room. There will also be maker spaces, a cultural offer and some flexible working space. So, it's going to be a real, true mixture of uses within that site.