Case Study: The Museum Hotel
The Hotel
The Museum Hotel is a high-quality boutique hotel in the heart of historic Oxford on the busy street of St Aldates. As a new hotel, Chrysalis was contracted to complete a conversion project on the interior of this 16th century building.
The Brief
Chrysalis’ conversion project was to help turn a number of tired first and second floor timber framed administrative offices into opulent guest bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms. Chrysalis were entrusted to source materials, furnishings and oversee the installation of ten new bedrooms and en-suite bathrooms, as well as the two coffee lounges
Overview and Scope
The hotel required a full refurbishment of former office spaces in order to turn them into idyllic boutique bedrooms and lustrous communal coffee lounges whilst preserving and accentuating the buildings features that have been there for hundreds of years.
The hotel consists of a number of en-suite bedrooms including deluxe rooms and an executive junior suite. The project called upon the many capabilities of Chrysalis’ design and manufacturing team to ensure the project met the hotel’s requirements.
The historic nature of the building required the Chrysalis design team to be sympathetic with some of the original features of this listed building; such as the exposed timbers and brickwork in the bedrooms that give this hotel its character and charm. Whilst incorporating the inherent features, Chrysalis was able to convey a modern and atmospheric composition to both the bedrooms and en-suite bathrooms. The design team at Chrysalis had to be mindful of the location of this project. The hotel, with concealed narrow entrances and a busy road to the front with bus routes meant it could prove precarious when entering the installation phase.
Design
During the design phase of this project, the design team took into consideration the narrow, 16th century interiors of the hotel. They understood that the age of the building meant large pieces of furniture may be difficult to not only get into the hotel but also along the corridors and into the specified rooms. They therefore had to create pieces that could be installed with ease but did not lack any features the client desired.
Again, the city centre and rear entrance location of the hotel meant when it came to delivering the furniture they had to do so in smaller quantities and on smaller vehicles. Although this would appear tedious, it ensured that disruption was kept to a minimum for the neighbouring businesses.
Installation
During installation, Chrysalis craftsmen had to work around and preserve many of the hotel’s original features such as exposed wooden beams and brick fireplaces. As the project neared its conclusion, the bedroom furniture layout was definitely a challenge for the design team as many of the bedrooms had quite a small footprint, often the case in city centre hotels. With this in mind, the warm cappuccino décor and all soft furnishings specified by the Chrysalis design team, were chosen to make the room feel as spacious as possible for the city guest.
The hotel was fitted with approximately 150 pieces of furniture, many of them being bespoke in order to cater to the client’s brief. The small footprint of the bedrooms meant that bespoke furniture was the best option to tailor make the dimensions to fit the rooms layout.
