Green Rooms set for launch on London creative scene

Opening in London, Green Rooms is a pioneering and unique arts hotel.

An authentic start-up social enterprise and creative hub, it will be an integral part of the arts and local communities, and will stand apart in a world of big chain and formulaic hotels.

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 – including Somerset House, LIFT, Create London and the Royal Court Theatre to name a few – 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, and is just 12 minutes from King’s Cross and St Pancras International stations, and 20 minutes from the West End.

The hotel is in a striking early Art Deco building – originally constructed in 1935 for The North Metropolitan Power and Electricity Company – that has been lovingly restored by renowned London-based architects SODA.

The furnishings are from fashion label Folk, coinciding with the brand’s growing lifestyle range.
Combining leading design with accessible rates (prices start at just £18 per night), Green Rooms is the brainchild of Nick Hartwright, co-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 sleep 12 and 16 people respectively.

There will be a bustling ground floor lobby bar where people can congregate, kick back, relax and share ideas, however it is the other public areas – the exhibition space and restaurant – that will really set the hotel apart.

The capacious gallery and exhibition space on the third floor features a number of original fixtures, including an imposing skylight window that is centred within the vaulted ceiling, and the space will be used by guests to put on performances and sharings while they are staying at the hotel.

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.

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 arts-led social enterprise hotel.

“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 the doors.”