The Peninsula London at Hyde Park Corner is the luxury hotel brand’s only hotel in the United Kingdom.

Situated at the gateway to Belgravia overlooking Buckingham Palace Garden and the Wellington Arch, the new building provides 190 guest rooms and specialist suites as well as 26 unique residential apartments and a penthouse eight storeys above ground, with retail space and an ornate lobby used for events and dining with live music at ground level. There are two distinct restaurants. Brooklands by Claude Bosi offers rooftop dining inspired by Brooklands’ aviation and motorsport history, and the other, Canton Blue, celebrates the cuisine of The Peninsula’s Hong Kong home.

Event spaces are housed across the five underground storeys and include two stately ballrooms. The St George Ballroom seats up to 450 guests and can be split into three rooms. It lies adjacent to the Wellington Room, which has a seated capacity of 60 guests. Four of five wood-panelled conference rooms equipped with modern audio-visual technology can be flexibly arranged as paired or separate spaces. Guests can also access a private cinema with Dolby surround sound and a connected bar.

The spa and wellness centre occupies two lower levels featuring two 25 m swimming pools within double-height subterranean chambers and two state-of the-art gyms, one each for hotel guests and for the residents, seven wood-panelled treatment rooms, changing, steam and sauna rooms, relaxation lounges, and a beauty salon.

The ballrooms and cinema, pool and spa, guestrooms and suites, luxury apartments and penthouse, and the two restaurants all had separate designers placing their individual stamp on each space.

Sandy Brown provided the acoustics consulting for the entire project, both the overall building and each internal portion, so that adequate sound insulation between spaces would better ensure they can coexist in the same building, and that appropriate internal acoustics within each space provides an exquisite acoustic experience to match The Peninsula’s famed luxury service.

Key acoustic issues included its busy and noisy location on the main north-south thoroughfare through the centre of London, requiring high-performance glazing to the living and sleeping spaces. Noise survey measurements were used to determine the building envelope criteria, which targeted internal noise levels in accordance with local planning conditions and World Health Organisation Guidelines for Community Noise.

The basement ballrooms were also in danger of being disturbed by the London Underground line to the north of the site. Vibration measurements and re-radiated noise measurements were taken in the previous building on the site along with modelling and calculation to inform the design of intricate heavy-weight box-in-box constructions, which also allowed the ballroom events to be as noisy as they needed without disturbing the rest of the hotel.

The residences were required to function independently, such that if one was under construction, the minimum sound insulation between apartments would be maintained, so a party wall was devised that provided 5 dB better than building regulations even with one apartment unfinished.

Noise from mechanical services was an interestingly complex issue in the project, as some of the most intensive spaces for ventilation are located in the basement levels, such as the swimming pools, spas, gyms, ballrooms and extensive laundry and kitchen facilities. Very large fans were required to deliver air to and from these levels through air shafts that pass alongside noise sensitive guestrooms and residences, presenting a challenge to adequately attenuate the fans as well as enhance the surrounding shaft walls for better sound insulation.

Areas including the lobby event space, the ballrooms, restaurants, meeting rooms and cinema required appropriate internal acoustics for amplified sound and speech intelligibility, balancing the need for strategically placed sound absorbing surface treatments with the luxurious aesthetic of each internal space’s designer.