Linking 3 Historic Buildings in Edinburgh To Create a 5-Star Hotel

The newly opened Virgin Hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland, was almost a decade in the making. Because it comprises three separate historic properties, each of which was listed under a distinct categorization, the 222-room hotel required a particularly complex adaptive reuse process.

The hotel includes the historic India Buildings, built in 1864 and listed as Category A, a distinction applied to buildings of national or international importance, either architectural or historic, in Scotland. The second property is a former medieval church that was listed as Category B, which denotes buildings of regional importance. And the third building, which was in a state of disrepair, is Category C-listed, a designation given to buildings of local importance.

Not only were the buildings in different categories, but they were also physically unaligned. “The church building is six storeys below the main India Buildings, so they were all over the place”, said Kerry Acheson, associate architect at Ica – Hospitality, Architecture and Interiors. “When we first went onto the site, we couldn’t make heads or tails of how the buildings were tied together. We just had to take that and run with it and try to connect them.”

Ica began working on what would become Virgin Hotel Edinburgh in 2013. The firm initially worked with a developer who bought the site from The City of Edinburgh Council for hotel development. They were planning to create a four- or five-star hotel, but then the site was sold to Flemyn LLP, a family office / co-investment boutique that invests in real estate, and a new developer, Jansons Property, came on board. They created a partnership with lifestyle hospitality brand Virgin Hotels in early 2018.

Virgin Hotels had been looking for a while to find a location outside of the United States to open a hotel, and Edinburgh stood out. Not only was it a particularly unique site, according to Acheson, but “the location of the site is excellent”, she added. “It is maybe a two- or three-minute walk from Edinburgh Castle.”

Scotland was also appealing because Sir Richard Branson – founder of the Virgin Group, which owns Virgin Hotels – has a personal link to the region. “First of all, my grandmother was from Edinburgh, my wife is from Glasgow, and I think technically I’m about three quarters Scottish, so I have been coming up for many, many years,” Branson was quoted as saying in The Independent.

The Edinburgh hotel has recognizable elements from the Virgin Hotels brand, yet it has its own personality. “Virgin Hotel Edinburgh is very Edinburgh with a very Virgin sense of humour,” Acheson said.

Tying the buildings and their identities into a cohesive design was difficult, but it was also exciting, according to Acheson. “We knew that we would have to put a new build element on there that would house the vast majority of the bedrooms and would make up a viable hotel design. But you don’t want it to look like a massive building in the middle of historic homes,” she said.

The buildings have façades on two different streets. The main entrance to the hotel is on Victoria Street, a curved and colourful street often photographed by tourists, and the church building is on Cowgate, a somewhat grittier street mostly known for its nightlife. The church building includes a reception space used for weddings, the bridal suite, guest rooms and Eve, the largest bar and restaurant in the hotel where breakfast and brunch are served.

The new construction element of the project links the India Buildings and the Category C building, which are both on Victoria Street, to the Church building, which is on Cowgate. “The Category C building was pretty dilapidated. Internally, we tried to save as much as we could. [We saved] the floors and the structure, but everything else has been taken out because it was sitting empty for so long that it was kind of falling apart,” Acheson said. The new structure was constructed on the back of the Category C building.

To connect the new construction with the India Buildings, Acheson’s team built a sky bridge between the structures by removing windows in the church. “We created a link through an existing window, so you could actually take the new build out and put the window back in and the building would be the same as it was originally,” she said.

Because of the topography of the site, which includes a steep hill, guests go from the Funny Library, a coffee shop and library on the ground floor of the India Buildings, through the sky bridge to get to the sixth floor in the new wing of the hotel. “The guests suddenly appear onto this bridge and the ground falls away beneath them and they’re six storeys in the air,” Acheson said.

Karen Maxwell, design director at Four-by-Two, a firm that completed the interior design on the project, added that it’s not just a bridge, it’s more like a sky garden. The space is very bright and filled with plants and it also houses a small coffee shop and seating. “You really see the buildings around you and how far above the ground you are,” Acheson said.

The City of Edinburgh Council asked the team not to create any new divisions in the India Buildings, meaning that the room sizes had to remain as they were. “We weren’t allowed to split them to put bathrooms in or anything like that. When they said that, we wondered ‘How do you create a 5-star hotel and not have an [en suite] bathroom?’” Acheson asked.

To solve the problem, they created a design that treated the bathroom like a piece of furniture; it’s built into the existing bedroom, but it doesn’t touch the ceiling, so it’s technically not a separate room. “That was a big challenge for [the] India Buildings – getting those bedrooms to work and to work well,” Acheson said.

The construction process was further complicated as it was happening in a tight city center and close to buildings that have been there for centuries. “When you’re working with historic buildings, there’s always going to be challenges,” Acheson said. There were a slew of surprises such as finding a staircase or a fireplace hidden inside some walls.

As for the interior design, Maxwell explained that it is varied throughout the hotel to create different moods for guests, and the dining and drinking establishments also have unique aesthetics. The Scarlet Lounge, a plush environment featuring red velvet couches that’s designed to host events big and small, is in the India Buildings. The lounge is situated next to the book-filled Funny Library, and they are both on the same floor as Commons Club Bar, a wood-panelled cocktail bar with touches of burgundy and an ornate red ceiling.

“When people go into the Scarlet Lounge, it’s quite sassy and energetic. It’s somewhere where you can have a cocktail, and you compare that to somewhere like the Funny Library where it’s that traditional room, where we can round up the Scottishness,” Maxwell said. “Everything that we did in that project from an interiors perspective was timeless, because the last thing that the brand wanted to do was to have to redesign it.”

Due to the physical limitations presented by the India Buildings, the Commons Club Bar and the Commons Club Kitchen are on different floors, rather than being in the same open-plan space as they typically are in other Virgin Hotels. The Commons Club bar is on the street level of the India Buildings, and the Commons Club Kitchen is on the floor below “essentially in what would have been the cellar spaces, though there are a few small street level windows typical of Edinburgh,” noted Acheson.

Virgin Hotel Edinburgh opened its doors in March 2023. After working on it for years, Acheson was recently able to stay there overnight. “When you’re designing and building something, you have an idea in your head of what it’s like, but until you see it in reality and see people using it, it’s really hard to appreciate it,” she said.

While in cities like London, it may be common to have a drink at a hotel bar, it’s traditionally not been a common practice in Edinburgh, according to Acheson. That’s precisely why it’s been even more special to see the locals enjoy it. “I think that particularly in Edinburgh, [locals] can be quite standoffish about hotel spaces, and I would say that Virgin is the exception to that,” Acheson said.

Acheson added that it was particularly rewarding to work with a historic building and restore it to prominence. “I’ve walked in front of India Buildings and Cowgate so many times over the years, and to see them brought back to life and being really enjoyed, you just appreciate it far more.”