The submarine hotel – Great Russell Street
December 11th, 2016
HT @PaulWellman_EG via @michaellondonsf
Since I found out about this the other day and this happened in Islington, I’ve been wondering, how would it be if you’re asleep in your bed fifty feet underground and a water main bursts in the street above? The former car park basement would fill with water, there would be no warning other than the occupants getting wet and then drowning. The basement would have no bilge pumps to clear the water.
If fire broke out where would the smoke go? In a hotel fire the smoke fills the corridors but at least when windows are broken open and doors opened the smoke can vent. What happens underground? Not only is the fire consuming the oxygen but the smoke has nowhere to go.
On a cruise ship, or worse in a submarine, both fire and flood are to be avoided. But to wilfully place yourself in harms way at your own expense seems to me foolishness of the highest order. How will the owners fill the rooms? Will they charge £20 a night? Will it be students who suffer a horrible death the first time disaster strikes?
Well ok, cruise ships have them. Not everybody can have a outside cabin, but I’m not sure if a London hotel ought to be going down this route. An inside cruise ship cabin is strictly for washing, sleeping and changing clothes owing to the vast range of activities and pursuits on board.
Existing – Google Streetview
Naturally, or in this case, unnaturally, air-conditioning is essential. The air-con equipment can, for the most part find a home anywhere in the building — the incoming air supply and extraction cannot. It must have an external face, and herein lies the problem. Since the St Giles Hotel occupies the upper floors, the only place available to locate the public face of the air supply/extraction is at ground level facing Adeline Place. This will provide an unpleasant experience for pedestrians at street level, and a constant noise source for the blocks of nearby residents. That the air intake and extract are within nudging distance of each other is another health concern.
Staying underground can seriously damage your neighbours health
Proposed
I’m not entirely convinced one would want to read a book in an underground hotel room. Will the hotel have a library? Reading rooms? Above ground. This stinks. If they want to use the space that badly build an Olympic sized pool and a 10 pin bowling alley and be done with it.
Bedroom 2.488m x 3.708m (8.16ft x 12.16ft)
2897-P-19-Rev-B-Proposed Section showing bulkhead
When I worked on a large cruise ship it worried me that a significant number of the crew slept in a warren of rooms well below the waterline, and the chaos that would have resulted down there had fire broken out, but on a ship that size it is a commercial necessity that all space is utilised.
But this car park hotel? No thanks.
This is a disaster waiting to happen and I sincerely hope it’s never built.
Planning application: 112A Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3NP. 2015/3605/P: Change of use of part ground floor and basement levels -4 and -5 from Car Park (sui generis) to 166 bedroom hotel (Class C1), including alterations to openings, walls and fascia on ground floor elevations on Great Russell Street and Adeline Place.
The documents