City escape

In an area which sees over 43 million visitors each year, the Hotel AMANO Covent Garden – a boutique lifestyle hotel from Berlin-based hotelier, The AMANO Group – brings the cool and carefree spirit of Berlin to the capital, making it an exciting new destination for Londoners and visitors to discover. This was a top-to-bottom project for Woods Bagot, leading on all architecture and interiors. 

Located in London’s buzzy Covent Garden, this new kid on the block is the first international destination from The AMANO Group, which currently has eight hotels in Berlin, one in Munich, and one in Düsseldorf. All AMANO properties have one overarching purpose: to enable their guests to enjoy beautifully designed spaces in the best city centre locations.

Originally known as Drury House, this building is located within a stone’s throw of Covent Garden’s Piazza, directly opposite the Theatre Royal. It was developed as an office in the 1980s with a façade and frontage to match its time, with 5 floors of workspace, an accessible rooftop and a curved corner entrance. The transformation of this building into a beautiful new London hotel was driven by the client, Manex Properties – a joint venture between AMANO Group, the highly acclaimed German hotelier, and investment firm Excellion Capital. 

Externally, significant enhancements were made to mansard, façade and windows to introduce better coherence with the neighbouring buildings, while ensuring a contemporary appearance. Careful consideration has also been given to how the new hotel interacts with its vicinity while also protecting and enhancing local amenity. As part of a catalogue of measures taken to benefit local amenity, the entrance and lobby were also repositioned further west along Russell Street.

The substantial re-development of Drury House also included the renovation of the original high-quality brick and stone, while also introducing high quality metal windows and Juliette balconies to create a contemporary yet timeless aesthetic, giving the building a new character to improve its relationship with the historic Covent Garden district.