The author of the latest project at London's Heathrow Airport is the Krakow-based office Iliard Architecture & Interior Design. The architects and designers designed the common spaces at the Radisson and Radisson RED hotels. The entrance, reception, lobby, two restaurants, a bar and two conference areas are decorated with timeless elegance and a clubby feel.
The presence of works by Polish designers abroad is always gratifying. Kraków-based Iliard is providing us with this joy more and more often. The studio is intensively developing its activities in Western markets. Iliard designers are the authors of the interiors of hotels belonging to major chains in such cities as Milan, Oslo, Leeds, Prague and Cologne.
hotel lobby
© Radisson Hotel Group
automotive and design icon
The development at Heathrow was commissioned in June 2020, and from the threshold guests are greeted by an icon of British motoring in Radisson's trademark color RED, a luscious red. The Mini Cooper treated as a design element is surprising and arouses curiosity. At the same time, it is a design object in its own right. It also fits into an interior located at an airport by referring to mobility and means of transportation. In addition, it is not just a decoration. The car's trunk can serve as a so-called "welcome corner," that is, a place where welcome snacks will be served to hotel guests.
Mini Cooper in the lobby
© Radisson Hotel Group
interiors with character
Hotel interiors, especially those at airports, can often be impersonal. The same cannot be said of the Iliard office's creation. The interiors of the communal spaces are elegant, kept in a somewhat clubby color scheme with recurring red elements. Beata Mazur, lead architect from the Iliard studio emphasizes:
"In the design we mix bold colors, strong accents and atmospheric lighting, setting them, however, in a certain universal context. The result is an elegant interior, which we break with an everyday casual style
hotel bar
© Radisson Hotel Group
two in one
The biggest challenge for the designers was to combine two brands - Radisson and Radisson RED - on the site of a pre-existing hotel. Lukasz Koziana, co-founder of Iliard, explains:
At the Radisson, this is the first such attempt, basically an experiment. In a way, we participated in a rather important process for the brand. Important from the perspective of the development of the network and plans to implement similar connections in other cities and hotels.
As a result, the hotel facility houses almost 900 rooms of different standards and finishing styles. The two brands target different customer sectors. The investor wanted the public areas to have a balance between the simplicity of the Radisson's design and the intense, exclusive interiors of the RED brand. Beata Mazur adds:
"An important inspiration for the design was the principle of 'share & connect', which the Radisson RED brand follows. - The idea is to arrange and furnish the interior in such a way that it encourages interaction and sharing among guests. This is expressed, for example, by placing various games, such as billiards and foosball, in common spaces. In the case of Heathrow, we placed interesting and unconventional board games on the elegant shelves of decorated bookcases
relaxation space
© Radisson Hotel Group
The challenge of a difficult time
The timing of the Heathrow London interior design and implementation also proved to be a challenge. Conceptual work began in February 2019, and construction work began in the first quarter of 2020. This coincided with the announcement of a global pandemic. The designers reacted promptly, incorporating the necessary design changes to improve guest safety and make it possible to use the hotel spaces even under a stricter sanitation regime. Beata Mazur describes the process this way:
After analyzing the number of seats their distance from each other in the common spaces, some of the furniture temporarily had to be stored and is waiting for better times. We also delineated the lines of queuing and movement of people, deployed Plexiglas divider panels in an effort to ensure that they were not "foreign" in the interiors and that their form and finish matched the aesthetics of the interiors. For Iliard, this was the first such a large and important subject, the author's supervision of which we carried out practically entirely online. It was an absolute novelty for all of us. Nevertheless, thanks to great cooperation with the project management company and the contractor and other designers and subcontractors, the whole process went smoothly.
