CAPITAL HOTEL MBOMBELA

Lowveld luxury

The 'portal', as architect Greg Reid of Boogertman + Partners refers to the façade facing the pool deck, is designed to draw in the eye towards the restaurant and bar, the public areas of the hotel.

The Capital Mbombela, a new hotel designed by Boogertman + Partners, sets the template for a new generation of hotel and apartment accommodation for business and leisure in towns and cities across South Africa.

Photography: supplied The Capital Mbombela, a new R205m hotel in Mbombela, Mpumalanga, introduces The Capital group’s distinctive model to the Lowveld city. The Capital Hotels and Apartments is known for its innovative combination of hotel rooms and apartment accommodation, combining business and leisure travel with the convenience of hotel accommodation and the comfort of an apartment. In the case of The Capital Mbombela, as well as various other properties, it also includes conferencing facilities.

“We identified a need for a sophisticated, luxury destination in Mbombela, to meet the needs of local businesspeople, business travellers, leisure seekers, and the local community,” explains Marc Wachsberger, managing director of The Capital Hotels and Apartments. “We have designed and built this hotel with a focus on modern and open design, providing Mbombela and surrounds with the perfect environment to mix and mingle in style.”

The Capital Mbombela was designed by Boogertman + Partners as an iteration of a model the hotel group and architects have been developing for some time. Lead architect Greg Reid says that the model is based on certain core principles that can be repeated, varied and refined for each individual site, rather than having to design from scratch for each new site. It is an approach developed in pursuit of efficiencies in various areas – spatial as well as economic.

The Capital Mbombela includes 100 hotel rooms and 50 apartment-style rooms. Reid points out that the configuration of having hotel rooms adjacent to apartment style suites – which include a kitchen – provides flexibility, especially well suited to businesspeople travelling together in pairs or small groups, as it provides the option of separate bedrooms, with a shared kitchen.

The hotel is divided between two parts, separating the accommodation from the more public areas, which include the restaurant and bar, conferencing facilities, gym, meeting rooms and other front-of-house facilities. (This arrangement allowed the construction of the accommodation and conferencing areas to take place in parallel. Accommodation, which tends to be modular and repetitive, typically progresses faster than front-of-house facilities, so hotel operations could begin while the conferencing facility was completed, without inconvenience or disruption.)

The aesthetics of the hotel conforms to the group’s particular brand of clean, quiet architecture in a recognisable palette of greys and neutrals.

The façade of The Capital Mbombela is dominated by the rhythmic intervals

Above: All the rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows, with views directed by the 'fin wall' design along the façade, which creates a nook in the interior of the rooms, perfect for an armchair.

Right: The elevATE Restaurant and Bar is laid out in a clever seating arrangement with movable room dividers so that it appears cosy when it has fewer patrons, and can 'expand' to accommodate large numbers at big events. of windows and balconies, featuring what Reid calls “fin walls”, which are angular balcony walls that alternate in direction. They not only introduce a kind of dynamism to the façade, but also serve to maintain privacy and focus the views from adjacent rooms in different directions. They have the added practical benefit of providing convenient and accessible cavities for various services and systems, including rainwater, HVAC, electrics and so on, and can be variously employed according to the requirement of each individual project.

Rather than punch windows, Boogertman + Partners chose floor-toceiling glass windows, which bring an added element of luxury to the rooms.

Room dimensions were dictated by the constant pursuit of efficiency, which nonetheless occasionally results in other luxurious details. For example, the corridors at The Capital Mbombela are a generous 1.8m in width rather than 1.2m, as a result of the parking grid beneath the accommodation, and the architects found a way to include glass “shopfront” windows to allow natural light into the corridors, too.

The “portal”, as Reid refers to the prism-shaped front façade of the conferencing centre and restaurant area, has a more distinctive identity and a richer, more tactile material palette than the accommodation wing. A grey face brick was selected to harmonise with The Capital’s universal colour palette, warmed and softened with timber around

The hotel is divided into two mains parts: the five-storey accommodation wing, recognisable by its distinctive rhythm of alternating 'fin walls' and windows, and a lower front-of-house section where the restaurant and conferencing facilities are located.

the pool deck. The trumpetshaped front façade draws in the eye, making a focal point of the restaurant and providing the hotel with a prominent and instantly recognisable public presence.

Conferencing rooms are located above the restaurant and bar area, which occupy the ground floor. The restaurant – which needs to be able to accommodate in the region of 200 seats when the hotel and conference facilities are at capacity – follows an ingenious flexible layout with clever modular seating arrangement and moveable partitions that still allow a sense of intimacy and cosiness between big events.

Left The apartment suites include kitchen and dining areas for home-away-fromhome convenience in the context of a slick hotel.

The elevATE Restaurant and Bar, with their rust accents, metallic sparkle of brass fitting, timber details and splash of colour at the bar, have proved a popular destination with locals as well as visitors. Queues for tables frequently form outside the restaurant on busy weekend evenings, demonstrating the appetite for similar offerings in towns and cities outside of the major centres, and providing scope for future variation on the architectural model developed for The Capital group.

Professional Team Architect: Boogertman + Partners Structural Engineer: Endecon Ubuntu HVAC Engineer: Q-Mech Consulting Engineers Electrical Engineer: RWP Taemane Consulting Engineers Wet Engineer: Wills Franklin Pretorius Consulting Engineers Fire Engineer: Specialised Fire Technology Quantity Surveyor: Oudmayer & Associates Safety Officer: Total Safety Development Manager: Construct Capital Main Contractor: iKotwe Construction Earthworks Contractor: Joubert en Seuns Landscapers: Carrie Latimer Landscape Design

Consulting Engineers Tel: +27 (0)11 608 5000 Email: gauteng@rwp.co.za www.rwp.co.za

Specialised Fire Technology (Pty) Ltd 257 Smit Street, Fairland, 2195 Tel: +27 (0)11 476 7420 Fax: +27 (0)11 476 7486

Tel: +27 (0)12 662 3088 E-mail: info@qmech.co.za www.qmech.co.za

Office: +27 (0) 12 012-5555 Email: admin@wf-p.co.za

Tel: +27 (0)13 750 1200/0044 E-mail: info@ikotwe.co.za www.ikotwe.co.za

C A P I T A L

Tel: +27 (0)10 599 0290 Email: info@cc.co.za www.cc.co.za