Principally designed to attract artists visiting and working in London, Green Rooms is a not-for-profit hotel that will offer sensibly priced accommodation in a beautiful setting that will inspire creativity. Through relationships with some of London’s leading cultural institutions Green Rooms will encourage its diverse and curious guests to engage in an exciting programme of exhibitions, events and performances. It will be an affordable place for artists, creatives, style enthusiasts and the wider community to stay, work, learn, play and collaborate.
Green Rooms is situated in North London opposite from Wood Green underground station. The hotel is in a striking early art deco building – originally constructed in 1925 for The North Metropolitan Power and Electricity Company and later restored by London-based architects.
Combining leading design with accessible rates (prices start at just £18 per night), Green Rooms is the brainchild of Nick Hartwright, founder of the Mill Co. Project, a social enterprise that offers creatives affordable workspace by day and that stages exhibitions and plays by night. For Green Rooms, Hartwright has worked closely with leading hotel entrepreneur Kurt Bredenbeck, the man behind the Hoxton Hotel. Green Rooms has also received backing from the Mayor of London and in-kind support from the London Borough of Haringey, which owns the building.
Accommodation at the four-floor hotel includes 22 double rooms, two studio apartments and two dormitory rooms which each sleep 12 people. A spacious bar on the top floor will be open to guests and local residents, and there’ll be a bustling lobby bar too where people can congregate, kick back, relax, and share ideas. However, it is the other public areas – the restaurant and exhibition spaces – that will really set the hotel apart.
The ground floor restaurant will be an incubator project running rent-free rotational residencies for emerging restaurateurs. It will be a supportive training ground where they will be able to develop their brands over a 12-month period. In addition, Green Rooms will host a free monthly programme of cultural events led by both artists residing in the building and the hotel’s institutional partners. An artist-in-residence programme supported by the Arts Council England will also run, and the hotel is offering an ‘insiders scheme’ providing discounts and previews across key cultural venues and restaurants in the capital.
Nick Hartwright said: “We set out to create something completely new and different with Green Rooms, and I believe we’ve done that – this is the UK’s first hotel social enterprise. There are thousands of hotels in London but there’s a real shortage of affordable hotel accommodation that doesn’t compromise on quality. We’re very confident that artists, creatives, style enthusiasts and the wider local community will love staying and working at Green Rooms. It’s going to be an exciting, inclusive and accessible creative environment, and we can’t wait to open our doors.”
James Clark
