Purcell, Idle and Wonder, and Customs Bureau present The Glasshouse Urban Retreat
Purcell and Customs Bureau teamed up to imagine vision for the Business Design Centre that draws on its history as an agricultural hall thrumming with life – a meeting place for both the residents of Islington and visitors from afar – into a hotel and civic space that weaves together food futures and guest experience into an inspirational sensory environment influenced in part by the concept of Agriturismo.
A visit to the newly imagined BDC is met with a dramatic public plaza flooded with life, both plant and people, with towering growing structures reaching upwards into and through the building’s dramatic vault. The smell of the freshest produce fills the air in both its raw form and as cooked in the dining platforms interweaving the farm. Guests checking into the hotel become custodians of their own garden plots experiencing first-hand what goes into making their bio-rich products.
The hotel’s approach is relentlessly sustainable with zero waste production and an organically parasitic method of construction – timber consuming steel as the original fabric degrades. In a nod to the original Sadler’s Wells Spring, the iconic roofscape will be opened to channel rainwater into the heart of the plaza for irrigation.
– Nick de Klerk, Head of Hotels, Purcell
The concept was followed up with an imaginative walking tour during the 2025 London Festival of Architecture. Providing an insight into the thinking behind the concept of the Glasshouse Urban Retreat and its grounding in the urban development of Islington, a small group was led through the streets of Angel Islington and the nearby Regents Canal.
