STOW-AWAY, STOW PROJECTS
BE OUR ECO-FRIENDLY GUEST
HENRY PESCOD
This month, we sit down with Henry Pescod, Project Director at Stow Projects, to find out more about Stow-Away, a completely recyclable eco apart-hotel in London’s South Bank that’s made out of repurposed shipping containers.
PROJECT DIRECTOR AT STOW PROJECTS
STOW PROJECTS
Tell us about Stow Projects. Stow Projects is a family business set up 10 years ago as a property development and urban regeneration company by Charlie Fulford and his father, Bill. Bill co-founded Camden Lock Market in the early 1970s and operated the market for 40 years before selling in 2015. Charlie and Bill have also founded and run several property companies involved in mixed-use urban regeneration schemes throughout London. I met them in 2012 when hired as a Property Analyst at Camden Lock Market before joining Stow Projects after the sale. Following similar principles to what made Camden Lock Market a success, we launched the Artworks in 2014 to revitalise underused spaces in London and transforming them into creative workspaces and FC&A – MARCH – 2021
social hubs. The first site in Elephant & Castle (now closed) reused 40 shipping containers from a housing scheme in the Netherlands. Working closely with Lendlease, the scheme ran for five years providing F&B and office studio space for new businesses and residents as part of the regeneration of Elephant & Castle. The second site in Deptford (Creekside) is still going as a diverse creative and commercial workspace that houses F&B outlets, a vertical hydroponic farm, alongside a growing number of design studios, agencies and filmmakers. In 2018, we opened our first Stow-Away and are now fully focused on operating and growing that into a successful apart-hotel brand in multiple locations. Now, as Project Director, my role is to find new sites and oversee the operations of Stow-Away.
How did Stow-Away, the apart-hotel, come about? Stow-Away is an eco-friendly apart-hotel in London’s South Bank, built to be sustainable from the ground up. The building is made from repurposed shipping containers – all repurposed and designed to run as carbon-neutral as possible. The project came about through Charlie’s relationship with Network Rail (now The Arch Co.) following a previous joint venture. We had become interested in hostel and hotel opportunities with longer operating potential (not just the five to 10 years we had been used to with creative studio spaces). We had noticed a rising trend in the travel industry, predominantly among young professionals, of global nomads. We were inspired by projects like Zoku in The Netherlands that provide a “home-office hybrid with hotel services”. 12
These are small yet functional spaces to live (and work) in a central city location, from a few days to a few months without breaking the budget. Network Rail had a vacant plot of land by Waterloo station that had been underutilised since the war that seemed the perfect location for both holiday and business travellers. Stow-Away came from this idea of providing intelligently-designed studios around fun communal spaces (in our case, a wine bar!) for travellers to enjoy the city for business or leisure. We already had experience working with shipping containers from projects like the Artworks, and we witnessed how popular they were with tenants and customers. With some smart design, we thought their size and shape could be well suited to a hotel - and so the ‘Stow-Away: Apart-Hotel’ was born!
