Why you should experience Hilton London Bankside in London, England.
Hilton London Bankside is an industrially expressive hotel where Bankside's manufacturing heritage, contemporary art culture, architectural experimentation and creative resurgence converge within a purpose-built interpretation of the neighborhood's postindustrial character.
Set along Great Suffolk Street near Union Street and just steps from Tate Modern, the hotel was conceived by Dexter Moren Associates for Splendid Hospitality Group as two adjoining forms connected by an internal lightwell and glazed entrance, using layered brick, metal and glass to respond to the surrounding warehouse fabric. Dexter Moren Associates developed the interiors with Twenty2Degrees, translating Bankside through exposed surfaces, metal screens and reprocessed Tube-style tiles while lobby flooring references Tate Modern's Turbine Hall and furnishings draw upon the prints of William Morris. British artist David Farrer contributed sculptures throughout the property, while Niki Hare created graffiti artwork at the entrance and an urban fox discovered through footprints in the construction screeds inspired artwork within the guestrooms. The result is a hotel where Dexter Moren Associates, Twenty2Degrees, David Farrer and Niki Hare translate Bankside's industrial and artistic identities into a distinctly site-responsive expression of contemporary Hilton design.
What you should know about Hilton London Bankside.
Hilton London Bankside is best known for opening in 2015 as a £120 million, 20,509-square-meter development containing 292 guestrooms, including 25 suites and a penthouse apartment with an 1,076-square-foot entertainment area and private roof terrace, representing Hilton Hotels & Resorts' first new Central London opening since 2006. The project originated from a Dexter Moren Associates brief dating to 2005, when the site was occupied by a banknote-recycling shed and the proposed development combined budget hotel, apart-hotel, conference and leisure functions before Bankside's regeneration supported its evolution into a five-star Hilton backed by developer Splendid Hospitality Group. The 576-square-meter Bankside Ballroom accommodates as many as 700 guests, while the wider events program includes spaces such as Globe, Borough, Agora and Blackfriars Boardroom. Recognition followed rapidly, with The Distillery winning the International Hotel & Property Awards' Global Bar/Club/Lounge category in 2017, Hilton granting the property its Award of Excellence in 2018 and World Travel Awards naming it Europe's Leading Business Hotel and Europe's Leading MICE Hotel that same year. CHS Awards and Conference Awards victories followed in 2019, alongside Travel & Hospitality Awards recognition as Modern Hotel of the Year, establishing a concentrated record of design, events and hospitality honors within four years of opening.
Chef Paul Bates established the opening culinary program at the 168-cover OXBO Bankside after arriving from The Beaumont, developing British-produce dishes including Cornish monkfish cheeks, Gloucestershire beef and Newhaven hake before Ollie Couillaud succeeded him as executive head chef in 2019. French-born Couillaud trained at Maison de la Formation in Poitiers, completed his Baccalaureate de Cuisine in 1988 and moved to London in 1992, where his career included working under Phil Howard at MICHELIN-starred The Square, launching La Trompette as head chef in 2001 and opening Tom's Kitchen with Tom Aikens in 2006. The Distillery builds a separate narrative from Stevenson & Howell's Standard Works, the nineteenth-century essence factory that previously occupied the site and distilled essential oils while producing essences, flavorings and garnishes, translating that history into house-made aromatics, infusions and bitters and a collection exceeding 100 gins. Together, Paul Bates, Ollie Couillaud, Phil Howard, Tom Aikens and Stevenson & Howell connect Hilton London Bankside's culinary character with British restaurant culture and the manufacturing history beneath Great Suffolk Street.
How to fold Hilton London Bankside into your trip.
Hilton London Bankside works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing industrial architecture, Elizabethan theater and centuries of London food commerce across Bankside.
Begin at Tate Modern, where Herzog & de Meuron transformed Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's former Bankside Power Station into a museum that opened in 2000, turning the immense former turbine hall into one of the defining exhibition spaces of contemporary art and later extending the complex through the architects' Switch House. Continue to Shakespeare's Globe, where American actor and director Sam Wanamaker's decades-long campaign culminated in the 1997 opening of a reconstructed open-air playhouse near the site of Shakespeare's original Globe, reconnecting Bankside with the theatrical culture that flourished south of the Thames during the Elizabethan period. Conclude at Borough Market, whose history reaches medieval Southwark and whose present buildings preserve the district's long relationship with wholesale and retail food trading beneath and around the railway viaducts approaching London Bridge. The progression moves from Scott, Herzog & de Meuron and industrial Bankside through Wanamaker's reconstruction of Shakespearean theater into one of London's oldest food-trading districts, revealing the architecture, performance and commerce surrounding Hilton London Bankside.
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