THE BELLS HOTEL

Project Insight

Prestigious Northern Design Award nominated, The Bells is an exclusive collection of individually designed, luxury serviced apartments. Our brief was to help create designs that were sympathetic to the original historic building to create designs that were ‘individual,’ ‘unique,’ ‘eclectic,’ providing the ‘wow’ factor, and giving the staying clientele a touch of luxury.

The use of local resources, raw building materials, exposed brickwork, iron steel girders, and the original stained glass windows were used at every opportunity or left in place, relocated as new features, or up-cycled into furniture. Each apartment was to be equipped with kitchens, beautiful unique dimmable lightning, luxurious bed designs, sumptuous fabrics and wallcoverings, furniture, hardwearing flooring, wall finishes, unique wardrobe designs and quirky art.

Our brief was to help create designs that were sympathetic to the original historic building. The designs were a collaboration with our client, property developer Michael Rothwell. His vision was to create designs that were ‘individual,’ ‘unique,’ ‘eclectic,’ providing the ‘wow factor’, and giving the staying clientele a touch of luxury.
Each apartment was to be equipped with kitchens, house bathrooms and in-suites where possible, beautiful unique dimmable lighting, luxurious bed designs, sumptuous commercially regulated fabrics and wall coverings, furniture, hard wearing flooring, wall finishes, unique wardrobe designs and quirky art.

The idea was to create apartments, which were unique to Leeds and possibly the North of England. It was also important that the materials and products used for the finishes would stand the test of time so the client did not have to keep repairing floors, walls and furniture every few months. We had to come up with innovative ways to ensure wardrobes wouldn’t break down (hence coming up with the idea of using metal and mesh), tiles and flooring had the best slip resistance, bathroom and living room tiles were sourced from Italy.

Wall coverings that were made from Italian plasters, re-used woods and concrete finishes were applied to some walls.

Design Procedure