Cardiff Bay Premier Inn

210 bedroom Premier Inn hotel and two speculative Grade A office developments totalling 160,000 sqft

The development of a 210 bedroom Premier Inn hotel including access, service area and 6 dedicated disabled parking spaces, primarily fronting onto Bute Place. The hotel use relates to the growing need for visitor accommodation facilities in the city of Cardiff.

The redevelopment of Cardiff Bay into a busy and vibrant centre for employment, leisure and living has been heralded as an urban regeneration success story in Wales. This has resulted in an increase in tourism but also a shortage of quality hotel accommodation.

This new phase completes development at the cross roads between Bute Place and Pierhead Street, bringing together a combination of residential, commercial and cultural buildings of varying height, scale and materials. The trio of proposed buildings acknowledge and complement the existing street scene with a concept that references the architectural language of both the sites surrounding buildings and its historic past.

The vision for this development is premised on a desire to ‘complete’ the existing crossroads with a group of buildings that acknowledge and complement the eclectic character of Cardiff Bay, while adding a high degree of vibrancy to the street scene. As part of the design process, consideration was brought to the Cardiff Waterside estate in its entirety and particularly the impact that the three buildings would have on the immediate context of the site and the continuing development of the Bay itself. Cardiff is thriving and tourism is buoyant, which represents a huge opportunity to design and develop a new hotel for a universally recognised and much-loved brand that will add an interesting and valuable addition to the street scene, and to Aviva’s Cardiff Waterside estate.

The design has incorporated a simple use of surface material and ‘punched-hole’ window arrangement, which acts as an active frontage to the street. The two office buildings will be similarly designed for continuity, one of which will be speculatively designed for added flexibility for potential occupiers. The outline design of the three buildings reflect the local character and style already established, but remain flexible to market demand and specific occupier requirements.