Spotlight... Ica

A Holistic Approach

Established in 2003, Ica is a 50-strong architecture and interior design studio dedicated to the international hotel market. With offices in Glasgow and London, the practice works across the UK, Europe and beyond, focusing on design, technical expertise and business acumen.

Hotels in the pipeline: The Gantry, London (2021); Moxy Spinningfields, Manchester (2021); Virgin Hotels, Edinburgh (2022); CitizenM Victoria, London (2022); Marriott Tribute Portfolio, Edinburgh (2024)

Click here to find out more on Ica’s approach

Welcome Change

Having orchestrated the design of hotels across the UK and Europe for the past two decades, Ica is planning for its next phase of growth.

Words: Ben Thomas

We started the business with three of us and now there are more than 50, so a lot of things have changed in the process,” says Ian Burleigh, Executive Chairman of Ica, as he looks back on the studio’s journey in the world of hotel design so far. “It’s taken a long time and a lot of hard work to create a team of people that share our values and skills.”

THE INITIAL FOCUS

Launched shortly after the turn of the millennium with a studio in Glasgow and a client space in London, Ica started life as an architecture and interior design practice solely dedicated to the international hotel market. From the outset, the firm focused on designing not only buildings and interiors but also businesses, specialising in how they operate as well as aesthetics.

“What made us popular was that we gelled quickly with clients and from a personality point of view we were easy to get on with, listened to what they wanted to achieve and tried to use the design tools we had in our box to assist them,” Burleigh continues. “It’s about having your finger on the pulse within a market.”

Part of Ica’s approach also involved being well prepared and getting things right early in the process, meaning the team wasn’t reliant on fixing problems down the line when on site. As such, the studio was able to apply its holistic ethos to different cities with ease, resulting in the expansion of its portfolio across the UK to the likes of Dublin, Manchester and Edinburgh.

“A lot of architecture responds to context first; the location, the adjacent buildings and their style. It is designed to those criteria and then the client’s requirements have to fit into that,” explains co-founder and Design Director Chris Fegan. “A fundamental of our approach however is that we understand our client’s requirements first, then analyse the site, design to their specific requirements and contextualise those. What we achieve is a functional, efficient and workable solution that’s fit for purpose but also responds to its location.”

A TURNING POINT

With the financial crisis of 2007–2008, Ica saw a surprising upturn in business. The reason? Clients were moving away from large-scale developments and instead focusing on cost-effective refurbishments. This led to the growth of its interior design team, creating a single studio that enabled its architects and designers to collaborate and cross-pollinate ideas.

This inside-out, outside-in methodology has since allowed the practice to deliver either the entire vision or work with existing partners to bring a project to life with its architectural expertise. Equally, Ica’s interior designers can join forces with external architecture firms but draw on decades of experience that comes from the synergy between its in-house teams.

Such was the case at The Gantry in Stratford, a visually remarkable yet equally buildable development in London’s Olympic Park. Opening in November 2021, the dual-branded project comprises an 18-storey Curio Collection by Hilton hotel with 291 guestrooms, an artisan food market and a rooftop bar, as well as a 17-storey Adagio Aparthotel. In designing the structure, Ica drew inspiration from New York’s Flatiron building and Stratford’s industrial past in equal measure, reflecting the heritage of the area through every element of design, materiality and function. A curved two-storey podium, formed by an interplay with the geometry of the hotel tower above, achieves a singular building aesthetic

that manifests in a skin of copper-coloured fins, allowing the property’s appearance to change through the day as the light shifts – the fins themselves are reminiscent of the heavy engineering from the borough’s railway era.

The industrial aesthetic has, however, been softened by the organic form of the building, with relaxed curves providing landscaped pockets and green edges that echo Stratford’s market town past – a time when it grew food that fed the whole of London. The columns of green combine with a series of terraced spaces to embed the landscaping within the architecture, rising up through the structure towards the bar on the top level.

Virgin Hotels Edinburgh delivers the same impact but in an entirely different way – with the added pressure of combining three listed buildings in a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Set within the former India Buildings in the heart of the city’s Old Town, the scheme aims to revitalise the long-neglected gap site, with Ica preserving its historic elements while laying the foundations for Virgin to add its signature style across 222 guestrooms and suites, several F&B outlets – including a flagship Commons Club – and meeting spaces.

“The hotel is testament to our ability to solve problems – in this case conservation issues – but remain focused on what needs to be delivered from a functional and operational point of view,” Fegan enthuses. “This approach unlocked the very complex urban site.”

A REALISATION

In late 2019, Ica started planning for its next phase of growth, with the firm’s senior team reviewing the connections across its largescale projects. It quickly became obvious that the link was one where a love of hospitality meets commercial focus and design excellence, as evident at The Gantry and Virgin Hotels Edinburgh, not to mention Marmalade on the Isle of Skye, which blends creativity and commercial understanding.

Looking at these developments anew led the studio to develop a new way of describing its offer: ‘Welcome Change’, a philosophy underpinned by three key pillars: creativity that is profitably applied, candid support for the client, and a deep love of hospitality.

“In terms of our approach to design, the fundamental strategy has remained consistent, but the projects we are working on have become more complex and challenging,” says Fegan as he reflects on the evolution of the hotel sector.

ADAPT AND INNOVATE

The past 18 months has had its challenges too, with Covid-19 changing the face of retail and office space in city centres and investors looking to hotels as part of the solution. With this shift in use, Ica has seen an increase in hospitality projects backed by institutional investors, including the redevelopment of the former Debenhams department store on Edinburgh’s Princes Street, for which the team is designing a luxury hotel that will make full use of the site’s views over the castle and gardens opposite.

Despite the testing times, the practice is looking ahead with promise, knowing that its ability to create design solutions that operate efficiently while working in tune with the locale will stand it in good stead for years to come.

“We set up Ica not as an architecture business, not as interior design business, but as a hospitality business, so that’s where the ‘welcome’ came from,” concludes Burleigh. “The ‘change’ derives from our approach, in that we’re not driving the agenda of design, we’re using design to drive our clients’ agendas.”