An interview with…
Patrick Reardon
Patrick Reardon is the co-founder of REARDONSMITH ARCHITECTS (RSA), one of the world’s most prestigious hotel architects and design practices. RSA have an enviable reputation in the restoration and rebuilding of internationally known luxury hotels, and in the design of award-winning luxury leisure destinations.
Patrick’s depth of knowledge and understanding about the way in which a luxury hotel needs to operate successfully is second to none. It is this wealth of experience that has helped secure contracts to oversee the restoration of world renowned hotels including The Savoy, The Dorchester, The Lanesborough, The Four Seasons, Rosewood and The Beaumont Hotel.
Patrick remains at the helm of the practice and has trained and nurtured a whole new generation of talented young hotel architects, several of whom have been appointed as directors of the practice to help keep his legacy alive.
Proud Suppliers of choice for selected RSA projects
A passion for architecture
GS What first attracted you to the world of hotel architecture, or was it just happenstance that brought you into the sector?
PR I was expecting to serve my career in the army, go to Sandhurst and join the family regiment. I grew up in South Wales, and that’s what a lot of us boys from the valleys were destined to do. But one night my father had some friends over and one of them was an architect. I found him fascinating. The thought that you could start by simply imagining something. Then drawing it on paper. And then watch the whole building process until your idea becomes a solid and beautiful reality. I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind.
And that was it! I ditched my military aspirations and moved into the area of architecture and design.
GS So it was just a chance meeting.
PR Yes. An unexpected conversation that totally changed the course of my life! And I still find the idea of architecture just as fascinating as I did then.
GS Most of the hotels you’ve developed since you started your own business have been within existing buildings. Is that more challenging than starting from scratch?
PR It is a different challenge, but many of our projects have been in the centre of cities like London, Paris, Rome, and St Petersburg, and it’s often more practical to convert what is already there than to destroy it and start again.
GS Would it be your preference to start from scratch?
PR Not always. One of the things I’ve enjoyed most is taking a building that isn’t a hotel, and making it work as one. That is something I love doing; far more challenging than working on a greenfield site.
The other thing I love is working on resorts. We have worked in Croatia, Monte Negro, Serbia, the Seychelles, Jamaica. I like those projects because it provides the perfect opportunity to weave the building into the landscape. That helps aesthetically and creates interest for guests, who can be pleasantly confused about whether they are inside or outside of the building. Also, with a resort, I believe that you should never see all that’s on offer on your first visit. There should always be places to explore and find.
As a visitor there is nothing more satisfying than discovering something new, something you hadn’t seen before.
GS Is there still a special project that you would love to do?
PR There are several. I am always seeing buildings that I’d love to work on, but there is one in London that I’m really frustrated by. It’s the old Marks and Spencer building in Oxford Street. It’s due to be demolished and replaced with something very bland and unexciting. And I just cannot understand why. It really upsets me to see that building being taken down when it was so clearly designed with great love and attention to detail, and humanity! I am sure it’s not beyond the intelligence of a group of creatives to make it work as a wonderful hotel, or something that the public could really enjoy. It sits alongside Selfridges, which is another beautiful building. I would love to have the opportunity to help make it work.
GS What do you mean when you say, “make it work”?
PR Well, we collaborate with all sorts of people, like developers and so on. And currently it seems that architects are known for the ‘F’s.’ That stands for Façade, Finish and Function, and the function is all about being able to make the building work, for whatever its purpose. And if they don’t work for the people who visit them, or work in them, or stay in them, then I cannot see the point. If it is just an exercise in urban sculpture, and it’s all about the façade and the finish, then it doesn’t work. I cannot stress this enough: a building must work for the people who inhabit it, otherwise I think it’s a failure.
The Savoy, London
GS Why did you choose to specialise in hospitality?
PR I used to work in New York in I M Pei’s office. My two children were small and lived with me in America, but I wanted them to be educated in the UK. So, we moved back. And there was an opening in an interior design company who were working on Quaglino’s restaurant in London. That was my introduction to hospitality. I stayed with them learning more and more about hospitality and restaurant design.
The team I worked with were doing some work with Grand Met Hotels in London at that time, and I received a call out of the blue from Holiday Inn International, who asked me to work for them.
GS Have societal changes affected the design of hotels?
PR I think the only radical change to hotel build in the past hundred years or so took place in the 1940’s and 1950’s when it was decided to put a bathroom in every room, instead of having one bathroom serving ten or more rooms. That was radical. Everything else since has been about fashion and technology. I’m bemused by the fashion of putting a bath in the bedroom. Why would you do that? Apart from copying something you’ve seen in a magazine. If you’re sharing a room, and you decide you want to run a bath at seven in the morning, but your partner’s still sleeping, what do you do? This is an example of the hotel as a social icon.
Have hotels become social icons?
PR Yes I think so. They have become places where everyone can meet, and talk, and eat, and parade, and show themselves off. Whereas previously, walking into a five-star city hotel was an intimidating experience for most people. And dining in a hotel restaurant was awkward for many. People were being served by waiters for the first time in their lives. They didn’t know what to do or how to behave. Times are much better now.
The hotel specialist
GS Where did you gain your experience in hospitality architecture and design?
PR I worked at Holiday Inn International for 15 years. I became Director of Architecture, and worked with my dear friend and colleague, Laurence Geller, travelling the world and creating hotels.
We worked on some fabulous hotels, but my favourite was on the Amazon River. It was a place you could only get to by plane. It was in Iquitos in Peru, which was the centre of the Peruvian rubber industry in the 19th century. Most of the town was designed by Eiffel with many cast iron buildings shipped up the river as components and assembled on site. We even had snakes in the rafters!
And they had an opera house! So, in that environment, the hotel was great fun to build.
GS Why did you leave Holiday Inn?
PR Well, after 15 years it had started to feel like a job. Even with the amazing locations, the first-class travel, the trips on Concorde, and so on. I was becoming bored. And then, unexpectedly, I received a call from a head-hunter looking for someone to do the job at Hyatt International in Chicago. I wasn’t overly keen because I didn’t want to move back to America, but they kept upping the salary until I felt I couldn’t refuse, so I took the job.
GS Did you enjoy it?
PR For a while I did. The money was ridiculous so that was good. But eventually I came to the conclusion that it just wasn’t right for me. I had just been divorced and I missed my children, who were at school in England, and if I’m to be completely honest, I don’t think I gave of my best. I was there for under three years. So, I returned to the UK and got a job with Richmond Design where I worked with Bob Lush. He and I worked together for a time, but it was never really successful, so at that point I decided to start up my own architecture practice in January 1988. It was the advent of what became ReardonSmith Architects.
The Lanesborough (above) photography: Anthony Weller
GS Is there more competition for work now than there used to be?
PR Yes. Even in the lean times, you could see that there were still opportunities for architects. People were still building hotels or converting hotels. So over time, more architects have come into hospitality. And we now have some very distinguished competitors, who are generally mates of ours. After all, we all work in the same puddle!
GS Did you know them before they came into the world of hospitality?
PR Some of them started here at Reardon Smith but were head-hunted by our clients. In fact, there are many ex-Reardon Smith employees who now work in very senior positions in hotel companies.
GS Is that a problem to you?
PR It’s to be expected. You can’t keep people forever. We have always nurtured and encouraged our staff and it’s good to think that we’ve helped to improve them as architects to the point where they’re sought after.
“I cannot stress this enough: a building must work for the people who inhabit it, otherwise I think it’s a failure.”
Garden Art at The Dorchester. Photography: Justin De Souza
The Dorchester
GS Are you an advocate of sustainability in hotel design?
PR Sustainability is such a buzz word. I’ve yet to hear a definition of what sustainability in hospitality truly means. In my terminology it means treating our earth in an extremely sensitive and serious way.
My great criticism of much of what is new in architectural building is that they use materials that are tortured and stretched in ways that might impress in terms of Façade and Finish, but they cost a fortune in energy use and other resources.
Fashion is the arch enemy of sustainability in my view, so I say, ‘Design it once. Ignore fashion. And love it forever.’
My heroes
GS Who are your heroes in hospitality?
PR Firstly, in terms of my attitude to design and its development; I M Pei. In my opinion, he was one of the finest architects in the world. I had a tiny job working in his office in Manhattan, and I was extremely fortunate to be assigned to projects that he took a personal interest in. So, I would sit in the back of a cab, or the back of a meeting room and just listen in awe to the way in which he’d work with clients.
The second one would be Jeremy King. A real gentleman. He’s had such an influence on the hospitality scene in London. Not only with his restaurants, like The Ivy, The Wolseley, Le Caprice and so forth, but his hotel, The Beaumont, which we worked on, is sensational. I was saddened when he lost control of the group, Corbin and King, but now he’s back and his new restaurants are thriving. He is still, in my view, one of the icons in hospitality. He’s very calm, quiet, but he knows exactly what he wants. And I am determined to help find him the perfect property for a new hotel.
And lastly, Conrad Smith, my business partner and friend who sadly passed away nine years ago. He’s a real hero of mine and I miss him, every single day! We were radically different in every metric of human life, and yet it was the perfect partnership. We shared a sense of humour and a vision for the business and I am immensely proud that we achieved exactly what we set out to at Reardon Smith.
GS What are your biggest frustrations as a hotel architect?
PR This is two-fold. Firstly, there are invariably issues in planning, where we must deal with local authorities, and that can be frustrating. As an example, we do a lot of work in Westminster, and they had a policy of refusing consent on conversions of office buildings into hotels. They said it’s because this would dilute the office accommodation available in the City of Westminster. Had they not realised that working life has changed dramatically in the past few years?
Secondly, Project Managers can be frustrating. The best are brilliant to work with. They will do anything to help, and if there’s a problem, they’ll find the solution. But the worst Project Managers are on the other end of the scale and do virtually nothing. Worse still, their Pavlovian response to a problem is to find someone else to blame.
The Beaumont exterior image: Anthony Weller. Interior images: ZACandZAC
GS What has been your favourite project?
PR We’ve done hundreds of hotels over the years, but my favourite was The Beaumont. Largely because of Jeremy King, who wanted to build a hotel in London that looked and felt like a hotel in New York. It was a lovely project to work on. We built the hotel within what was a rather grand garage just behind Oxford Street.
I recall that Jeremy was struggling a bit with an interior issue, not the concept but something to do with how an area was to look. So, he invented a fictional character to help him, his name was Jimmy Beaumont, a successful restaurateur in 1930’s America, near the end of Prohibition, who was building the hotel in London but wanted it to look and feel like a New York hotel. And from then on, whenever we faced a problem with the design, we’d say “What would Jimmy do?” And that helped to set the framework for the way we all thought about the building.
I must say that even now, when the hotel is under new management, and when they’ve made a few internal structural changes, I still think it is my favourite. And the one I’m most proud of.
GS What advice would you give to your former self?
PR I would say, ‘Take a back seat, listen and learn.’ And if you’re in a hotel, talk to the Concierge, talk to the Waitress and the Housekeeper, talk to the Porter. Talk about what’s important to them in their roles. And learn from them. Only then will you start to understand what a wonderful animal it is that we’re helping to create. And it is! The world of hospitality is truly wonderful.
I’m so glad I’m not a soldier!