Two projects shortlisted for a RIBA London Award 2026

We're delighted to share that both the Mandarin Oriental Mayfair and The Emory have been shortlisted for a RIBA London Award 2026.

Mandarin Oriental Mayfair

Located in London’s historic Hanover Square, the Mandarin Oriental Mayfair offers 50 guest rooms and suites and 77 private residences, two restaurants, a rooftop bar, a spa with a 25-metre pool, and terraces providing generous views over Hanover Square and Westminster.

The client’s brief called for a mixed-use building to replace an existing office structure, set at a grain and scale responding to the evolving diversity of uses around Westminster’s historic Hanover Square and capitalising on increased footfall from the new Bond Street Elizabeth line station. It is the first new-build luxury hotel in Mayfair for over a decade.

Uniquely, the building employs a structural Vierendeel frame located on the building’s exterior. This bespoke steel exoskeleton creates a grand “townscape façade” balancing cultural continuity with architectural innovation. The design responds sensitively to the rhythm, articulation, colouration and proportion of the Georgian architecture in Hanover Square while offering an imaginative contemporary language.

The Emory

The Emory is the first all-suite hotel in London offering 60 sun-filled suites and one penthouse across eight levels alongside a ninth level of social spaces. The design responds to severe site constraints within the ground including the north Piccadilly Line tunnels running as close as 6m, and to the south bordered by the subterranean support areas of The Berkeley.

To overcome these constraints, a stability structure with a part-suspended floor system was incorporated into the fabric of the building and expressed on the skyline. The whole structure top to bottom sits on bearings that minimise vibrations from passing trains impacting the hotel. 

The approach provides a structurally efficient solution, covering a very small footprint, minimising the impact on the internal layout of the superstructure, but also giving the new building a visually striking appearance. 

The modular structure enables flexible use of the rooms that can be transformed from separate suites into one apartment on each floor. Blending contemporary design with understated elegance, this distinctive contemporary insertion into The Berkeley hotel site in Knightsbridge offers a contrast and a complementary addition to the existing building and the refurbished north block.