Empire Riverside Hotel

The British design team won the competition for the hotel in 2002. Standing above the harbour piers on the grounds of a former brewery, it has 328 rooms with views over the river.

The complex consists of three staggered volumes: a 20-storey tower, an L-shaped base and a separate retail and office building. At 74 metres the tower forms a new landmark on the skyline. The public areas, lobby, conference rooms, restaurants, ballroom and lounge, sit in the base around a four-storey entrance hall that links them visually. Seventeen floors in the tower hold the rooms and suites, and a bar on the twentieth floor offers panoramic views.

A post-and-beam façade of glass and bronze covers all the volumes as one homogeneous layer, unifying them and forming a quiet backdrop to the neighbouring buildings.