Hotel, Avebury Boulevard

  • Project
  • Hotel, Avebury Boulevard, Central Milton Keynes
  • Type
  • 140 Bedroom Hotel with Adjacent Leisure Facility
  • Status
  • Planning Application April 2014
  • Client
  • Abbeygate Developments

This proposal for a 140 Bedroom hotel (C1 use) with adjacent leisure facility (A3 and D2 use) forms Phase 2 of the existing ‘Leisure Plaza’ complex completed in 2014 (Ice Rink and Morrisons superstore). The hotel provides 140 bedrooms in a range of sizes with 28 bedrooms per floor over 5 floors facing onto Avebury Boulevard and towards the station, with the 2 storey leisure box behind.

The building form is placed on a facade line continuous with that of Morrisons and the Ice Rink effectively completing the rectangle of the development, and stepping up to the most prominent corner of the site. The entrance is to this corner and emphasised by a large projecting colonnade structure. The design of these structures encourages pedestrian activity, creating a sense of place and vitality, but also giving the building an identity in a similar way to the entrances of the adjacent buildings.

The range of materials proposed reflects those used on the adjacent Morrisons and Ice Rink, with the silver pattern of the aluminium cladding wrapping around the facade, solid brick plinth and large areas of glazing to ground floor for active frontages being utilised again. By adding a contrasting dark grey coloured cladding to the palette on the hotel bedroom facade contained by arches of the silver cladding the repetitive nature of the hotel window pattern is reduced. Additionally, by the use of brightly coloured window flashings to these reveals and to the canopies like the adjoining buildings the facade is animated, lively and memorable.