Speicherstadt Hotel: a hotel built into a Hamburg warehouse

Speicherstadt Hotel is a 38-key boutique hotel within a 19th century warehouse in Hamburg's UNESCO World Heritage Speicherstadt district, opened in May 2024 after a 22-month design and construction programme. The warehouse is protected under German Denkmalschutz heritage law, with significant original brick masonry, cast-iron columns, and timber Kontor floors preserved across the principal levels.

The brief from the operator was straightforward but uncompromising: a contemporary hotel interior that respects the industrial heritage fabric without imitating it, supporting a clear point of view on hospitality. The cast-iron columns, exposed red brick, and original timber Kontor floors were not obstacles to be designed around. They were the project's most valuable design asset, and the brief required them to remain the central architectural experience of the hotel.

• Cast-iron columns from the 1880s and 1890s retained throughout the principal floors
• Original red brick walls were retained, cleaned, and repointed where they had been damaged
• Original timber Kontor floors and stair structures were lifted, repaired, and reinstated across the principal levels

Contemporary intervention in dialogue

The challenge of the project was to insert contemporary hotel programming, including guest rooms, suites, a restaurant, a bar, and a members' lounge, within the constraints of the heritage fabric. New interventions were detailed to read clearly as contemporary additions, in bronze, walnut, and German cream limestone, in deliberate contrast to the surviving 19th century industrial fabric.

• New guest room walls were detailed as freestanding objects within the warehouse volumes, reading as inserted contemporary elements rather than alterations to the original
• Bronze and walnut joinery throughout the public rooms detailed to contrast with the original timber and brick fabric
• New rooftop pavilion in lightweight steel and bronze, set back from the parapet to remain invisible from the historic streetscape

"The cast-iron columns and brickwork were the brief. Everything else was about creating the right contemporary frame to allow them to remain the experience that guests will remember."