Award of Merit:

Bates Smart for Hilton Melbourne Little Queen Street

Bates Smart is a multidisciplinary design firm delivering interior design, architecture, urban design and strategic services across Australia, with a staff of over 250 in studios in Melbourne and Sydney. Our award-winning projects transform the city fabric and the way people use and inhabit urban spaces and built environments. We understand the social and economic forces currently shaping communities and their impact on built environments of the future. Our founders were the innovators of their time, and we are leaders in the debate on how and where we work, meet, live, learn and heal. Our approach is not simply about making big gestures. We nurture and develop every size of project and all its elements, until the details complement and enhance the whole. 

Bates Smart’s clients are the partners that make the work we do possible. We understand their commercial objectives and the risks that must be balanced to bring their projects to fruition successfully. As we move forward energetically, our studios embrace the challenge of each project, questioning assumptions and testing solutions until we find their bespoke optimal outcome. The approach that has delivered our transformational buildings is at the heart of all our projects, large and small; they are affirming, uniquely conceived for our clients, and beautiful.

About the Project

Recently completed, the Hilton Melbourne Little Queen Street incorporates the refurbished 1931 Equity Trustees building with an additional six levels as well as a new 16-level tower to the rear. Overall, the development includes 244 hotel rooms and 10 suites, a signature restaurant and sophisticated cocktail bar, alongside guest amenities such as gym, meeting rooms and function spaces. 

The heritage building provided inspiration for the overall design. Many of the original details have been restored and interior spaces impart the elegance and glamour of a bygone era, but with a distinctly modern interpretation. Mindful of the character of the site, the new addition provides a respectful backdrop to the existing building. The extra levels and tower reference the geometry and rhythm of the original building, thereby creating a synergetic relationship between old and new. 

The hotel’s premium hospitality offerings are accessed via the heritage building on Bourke Street. This allows the venues to create an identity separate from the hotel and to also attract the general public. Access to hotel reception is via the entry on Little Queen Street, which activates a previously underutilised laneway. Here, the porte-cochere is distinguished by a dynamic bronze and gold glass screen, alongside two grand columns which reference the entry of the heritage building. By locating the hotel entry on Little Queen, the design taps into the city’s renowned laneway culture and delivers a quintessentially Melbourne experience.

Category: Place

Designers and Project Team:
Jeffery Copolov / Interior Design Director
Julian Anderson / Project Director
Kristen Whittle / Design Director
Karen Wong / Project Leader
Grant Filipoff / Interior Designer
Sarah Kren-Kibblewhite / Interior Designer
Tim Fowler
Quentin Leroy
Lisa Gerstman
Derek Hawkes
Bobby Wei
Chui Yao (Judy) Chan
David Smith
Ting Sun
Sophia Ge
Molly Rizzo
Dominic Cheuk
Neil Penny
Sarah Hull
Laura Fisher
Jefferson Protomartir
Rando Profnasta
Audrey Cavalera
Mark Di Bartolo