Boundary - London

Sir Terence Conran has not just exerted an immeasurable influence on the worlds of hospitality, design and food in the UK. He has changed the very way in which we live our lives. From opening his first restaurant (The Soup Kitchen, opened in 1954, where a bowl of soup cost a shilling) and his first store (the original Habitat in Chelsea, launched in 1964) Conran built up two business empires, one in retail, one in restaurants. Along the way, there have been other businesses, run not so much as diversions or brand extensions as parallel enterprises that have informed and employed each other’s services.

The Great Eastern, Conran’s reinvention of the grand railway hotel adjacent to London’s Liverpool Street station, was one such endeavour. Conran & Partners, the affiliated interior design and architecture practice which has designed the interiors for Conran’s own projects as well as those of other clients, another. Benchmark, the bespoke furniture manufacturer, and Conran Contracts, specialist supplier of furniture and lighting, work on both Conran & Partners’ projects and those of external design practices, providing further examples of Conran’s diverse, yet thoroughly complementary, portfolio of businesses.

Eventually the retail business changed ownership, as Habitat mutated via acquisition, merger and flotation into Storehouse plc. When Conran’s 51% share in D&D, the holding company for his restaurants, was put on the market last year (an earlier management buyout had taken the remaining 49% from Conran Holdings in 2006) many considered it the end of an illustrious career. The Independent asked if this was “the end of the Conran era.”

Such assertions proved premature. Despite his advancing years (he is now 78), Conran has shown himself not quite ready to hang up his trademark blue shirt just yet.

As Goldman Sachs were busy preparing a sale of Conran’s stake in D&D, work was well underway on his next project. The credit crunch may have stalled the D&D disposal but Conran, together with his wife Vicki and former operations director, Peter Prescott, pressed ahead regardless with his ambitious conversion of a Victorian warehouse in Shoreditch.

Left unoccupied for many years, parts of the building’s structure had become slightly dilapidated but the original 1893 configuration had barely changed since its original inception. Over the course of a two year period, the layout of the original building has been altered by Conran & Partners who have demolished the existing mansard and constructed two new floors, housing duplex suites, clad in pre-patinated green copper and timber brise soleil.

The resulting building is a multi-faceted hospitality operation – bar andrestaurant in the basement, cafe and grocery store on the ground, with hotel bedrooms above, capped with a rooftop bar.
Sleeper’s tour of the property began with lunch in the subterranean restaurant, with Tim Bowder-Ridger and Jane Lawrence of Conran & Partners.

In scale and structure it’s the sort of space that Conran has always done well. Bare-brick archways and alcoves accommodate elegant upholstered chairs in deep red and indigo velvet, curved walnut wall panelling and banquette seating, all by Benchmark. Dominant features include a vast wall housing the five hundred strong collection of wines, and the open kitchen (another Conran trademark). Overhead, a 30m long ‘flying carpet’ feature created by from canvas and plywood panels, is inset with fibre optics in the shape of the constellations. Underfoot, French Bleu de Savoie marble has been arranged in a bold, geometric pattern.

Carefully lit displays of objets trouvés adorn the walls, alongside specially commissioned artwork, such as Richard Smith’s three-dimensional piece ‘Breaking the Boundary’.

Following lunch we embarked on a whistle-stop tour of the bedrooms. Although each is different, and the finishing touches were still being put to some of them on our visit, two things immediately struck your writer as common to all of the rooms. Firstly, the amount of natural daylight which floods into the spacious interiors, particularly the four corner rooms, each of which has six large sash windows. Secondly, thanks to the sheer quality of finish throughout, this is a 19th century warehouse that feels like it was built yesterday, rather than a rough-around-the-edges conversion. Great care has been taken to retain the most charming of the building’s original features – the distinctive brickwork, those large sash windows and industrial design light-wells. These are large rooms by London standards, the smallest weighing in at 32m2.
Each of the twelve rooms on the first two floors has a different design inspired by legendary designers or design movements. These include classic 20th century modernists such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Eileen Gray, or movements such as Bauhaus, Shaker, and Scandinavian. Other rooms pay homage to more eclectic sources – various young British designers in one room, cartoonist and illustrator Heath Robinson in another.

The third and fourth floors house four duplex suites, all with outside terraces, and designs by Terence Conran, Vicki Conran, Priscilla Carluccio (Conran’s sister) and Polly Dickens (Creative Director of the Conran Shop).

The bathrooms are also individually styled, some to suit the designers honoured in the adjacent bedrooms, others as wet rooms. Fittings, supplied by CP Hart, range from classic Czech & Speake sanitaryware to ultra-modern Japanese WCs by Toto. Furnishings are a combination of classic and contemporary pieces relevant to the individual designers or theme of each room, supplied by Conran Contracts, and bespoke designs by Benchmark. The latter company has developed wardrobes, sideboards, bedside tables, desks, mirrors and bathroom furniture based on a common design. Different woods, finishes and fabrics were then used to create a distinctive look in keeping with the various themes and designers. In the Eames-inspired room, elegance has been introduced through the use of walnut for the wardrobes and marble sideboard tops. The look of the Eileen Gray room is more opulent with black gloss lacquer and mirrors. In the Scandinavian room, a predominance of ash achieves a light and airy feel.

Benchmark also developed a set of common yet individual furniture for the five suites. In the ‘Modern Italian’ suite designed by Priscilla Carluccio, chrome and brightly coloured laminates were used for a crisp, clean look. In Polly Dickens’ ‘Modern Dickensian’ suite, brushed black finishes, burnt oak and dark velvet were introduced, whilst in Vicky Conran’s ‘Coastal’ room a sense of calm is achieved with hand painted furniture and distressed finishes. The most unusual space is the 61.5m2 ‘double-width’ suite, designed by Sir David Tang in a modern Chinoiserie style similar to that of his own house on the sea in Sai Kong, and the China Clubs in Hong Kong and Beijing.

The Rooftop terrace bar has been a resounding success in the first few months of its opening. The space includes a large bar with white-cushioned wicker seating arranged around an open fireplace, and a 48-seat grill restaurant all surrounded by a garden designed by Nicola Lesbirel.

Following a perfectly restful night’s sleep in the Mies van der Rohe-inspired corner room, Sleeper enjoyed a traditional full English breakfast in Albion.

Here, there is a sense that things have somehow come full circle for Conran, who began his career in the years of post-war austerity. Albion, which provides a grocery store and bakery as well as a cafeteria, unashamedly taps into a nostalgia for that era, one which seems to have struck a chord in these recessionary times. This is a caff with a double-eff, not a café with a continental accent, although as you’d expect from Conran there is a flair to the utilitarian design. There are tins of Lyle’s Golden Syrup and bottles of HP Sauce, enamelled water jugs and woollen tea-cosies. The menu appeals to the current vogue for comfort food – the pies and puddings, custards and crumbles of childhood which the British apparently crave when times are hard. The design reflects this pared-down philosophy, using natural, sturdy and hardwearing materials, including unique stools made from replicas of antique tractor seats, and traditional style vegetable racks and boxes to display the produce in the food store.

Some critics have chosen to look upon Boundary as Conran’s swansong. It looks like they were premature in doing so. There is the suggestion that Boundary may just be a preamble to a bigger return to the hotel world. As we went to press The Times reported that he was planning to open three more Albions in the capital as well as another

Boundary-style hotel. Yet again, even in the throes of a recession, Conran appears to have succeeded in capturing the zeitgeist and giving the British public what they want.

Boundary
2-4 Boundary Street, Shoreditch, London, E2 7JE, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7729 1051
Web: www.theboundary.co.uk

Rooms 12 bedrooms, five suites (inc. four duplex suites)
Dining Boundary Restaurant, Albion Cafe
Drinking Boundary Bar, Rooftop Bar