Trevor Morriss, principal at SPPARC discusses how the practice embraced the challenge to convert a historic multi-storey car park at London’s Olympia in the Streamline Moderne style into a hotel and school, as part of the site’s cultural redevelopment.
“Adjoining the main Olympia building there is gradually taking shape the huge new garage which will solve the car parking problem of future visitors,” reads a newspaper cutting from February 1937. As this would suggest, the world-famous London exhibition centre’s Victorian architects could not have predicted just how far the rise of the automobile would change not only how visitors accessed the ‘People’s Palace,’ but town planning at large, for the next hundred years. With around two million cars on the road by the end of the 1930s, the thousands that attended the buzzing exhibition centre every year needed somewhere to park their Morris Eights and Ford Model Ys.
Located to the Olympia site’s north on Maclise Road, the five-storey car park was one of Europe’s largest garages at the time of its 1937 opening, increasing the venue’s car parking capacity by 1,200. It was also one of the first car parks to use a double ramp system; staggered floors connected by curved ramps at each side elevation provided two separate routes out for traffic. This meant over 1000 cars could leave the exhibition centre in less than 20 minutes.
Aside from its practicality, this addition also gave the multi-storey car park (MSCP) its distinctive look. It was one in a series of projects that marked a step change for Staffordshire-born architect Joseph Emberton, perhaps best known for the Simpson’s department store building in Piccadilly. Lacking the ornamentation of his earlier Art Deco work, the car park’s curves and long horizontal lines give it an elongated appearance that exemplifies the Streamline Moderne style.
Evolving needs
Nearly a century on, transport’s decarbonisation and the emerging ideal of the ‘walkable city’ have called into question the priority that cars have long been given on our streets. With our masterplan for Olympia creating a state-of-the-art logistics centre underneath the exhibition halls, the former car park needed a new future.
Given the complexity involved in converting MSCPs to other uses, it is perhaps unsurprising that other buildings in this category, particularly later Brutalist additions to Britain’s landscape, have been lost to the hands of time. Famous examples include Gateshead’s Trinity Square, known for its appearance in Michael Caine’s Get Carter, that was demolished in 2010. But with newly acquired Grade II listed status, adapting a multi-storey car park to meet the needs of Olympia’s masterplan presented an exciting challenge for SPPARC.
The eastern portion of the newly renamed Emberton House is undergoing transformation into a 11,056 m² five star hotel, one of two hotels set to open at Olympia. Meanwhile, the western portion has been designed for a new school focused on the performing arts, as part of meeting the masterplan’s cultural aims. Arranged over 6,474 m², the Wetherby Pembridge school includes a new community theatre that will complement the site’s new creative uses.
Working within constraints
From the get-go, SPPARC set out to retain and celebrate the MSCP’s architecturally significant exterior. Thought to be inspired by the Schocken department store in Chemnitz, Germany, the facade has horizontal bands of light coloured brick, between which are four continuous glazing strips that span the length of the building, curving at side elevations – faithful to the original composition. The addition of stainless steel balustrading and painted steel doors and windows call back to Olympia’s Victorian roots.
The main challenge of converting an car park into other uses is the low floor-to-ceiling heights. Once all the requirements of a modern building like HVAC, lighting systems, and sprinklers are installed, this leaves a very limited clear height of around 2 metres. Adapting the height of the slabs was, therefore, needed to bring the building back into use, while ensuring these aligned sensibly with the retained window openings.
With no less than 10 split-level floors, the car park’s existing structure consisted of a traditional reinforced concrete frame with columns supporting its vertical loads and cores, with one-way reinforced concrete slabs. SPPARC replaced the internal structure with a new reinforced concrete frame and post-tensioned slabs, connecting these to the original facade. This created single level floors and increased the clear height for the hotel and school uses, with a slight variation between the two that reflects their differing requirements.
SPPARC also introduced two additional storeys, bringing the total to seven. This lightweight glazed extension is set back by around 8 metres to ensure the increase in height is sensitive to its surrounding context. The elegant use of glass, defined by a balance of horizontal structure and vertical pleated glazing that is inspired by the original Grand Hall, enhances the MSCP’s visual cohesion with the wider Olympia masterplan, that utilises similar references.
Though adapting the MSCP required working within significant constraints, several retained aspects of the original design played well into the change of uses. Particularly well suited to the hotel is the building’s ribbon glazing. Wrapping the exterior, this allowed for windows that span the width of the exterior wall, allowing in plentiful light and reducing reliance on artificial lighting. Facing a low-scale urban fabric, particularly from the north elevation, this also provides guests with a wide, continuous view over London from the second floor up.
A new lease of life
Opening in late 2025 as part of the rest of the newly regenerated Olympia, Emberton House blends London’s architectural heritage with contemporary interventions that secure its use into the future. An important milestone in the developing design of this building type, the restoration sought to celebrate the car park’s influence, while ensuring it contributed to the vision of the wider masterplan in a meaningful way. Originally solving a car parking problem, the building is enjoying a new lease of life, training a new generation of creatives and increasing Olympia’s appeal as a cultural destination in its own right.
Trevor Morriss is principal at SPPARC