The Hatch Rooms and Hatch Student Living launch in Cork.
Hatch Cork is the flagship location for the new student living brand. In a highly competitive market, Kingston Lafferty Design were appointed to define the brand’s visual identity and tasked with creating an impactful, experiential and collaborative ground floor space, encompassing reception, co-working, chill out, study, canteen and interactive spaces to provide inhabitants with an exciting environment and ultimately to add significant value and visual appeal to the brand. KLD also consulted on the rooms, fixtures, fittings and palette, design and decoration.
Nest Area including Cinema
The Hatch Rooms and Hatch Student Living have launched in Cork city. The business model works in a similar way to co-working spaces with an entry base level cost which has additional extras to increase spend. KLD worked with the client on these aspects to increase the overall offering. These items to include gym, laundry, private cinema area, coffee kiosk, yoga studio space and a hotel offering for the summer months.
The 265-room property opened in June 2019 after having undergone an extensive €25 million upgrade.
The property at Copley Street in Cork city is controlled by Hatch Student Living with financial backing from Elkstone, a multi-family office based in Dublin. Hatch acquired the property in February 2018 and set about upgrading a co-living property for students driven by increased demand in the city.
The story of Hatch Copley Court was to create a happy and unique space, tailored to the students’ needs and wants by using flexible simple creative design. The vision of HATCH was to expand, create and inspire by employing a modular system and creating a template to enable HATCH to grow. This template can now be adapted to each location, creating brand recognition on a global scale.
EXECUTION
With our design we energised and brought the space to life, making it not only aesthetically pleasing but also a nice place to be. Every perfectly framed space is a performance opportunity with the immersive design imploring interaction from its users, ensuring that every day tells a different story.
THE RESULTS
A garden zone connects the outside in, frequented with olive trees, hanging plants & floors covered in grass. The connection with the outside and biophilia was important as there was a lack of natural light in certain areas. Other finishing materials such as mirrors allowed light to bounce throughout, creating infinity spaces and allowing spaces to appear larger. The use of playful shapes in acrylic & perspex, with stripes enveloping walls/ floors and ceilings along with giant lollipop lights make for a magical Willy Wonka type mood.
As well as the playfulness, it has also a grown up feel with a muted colour palette in tiling and upholstery details to counterbalance the childlike, sculptural elements. The apartments & corridors are an extension of the entrance social space, carrying the same design concept throughout each apartment but adapting it to make it more liveable. The bedrooms and living spaces have complimentary finishes with a muted colour palette to contrast against the slick rich charcoal coloured joinery finishes with subtle tiling detail. The element of playfulness was carried through with colourful and sculptural pieces of furniture added in the form of chairs, rugs and lighting. Large scale architectural artwork was hung to add a sense of colour and comfort.
THE LAUNCH
The Hatch Rooms launched on June 19 2019.
Getting the Hatch Rooms open on time and on budget was a major feat. The hotel was fully booked on its first weekend. Bookings continued to be strong and right now almost all of the student accommodation has been taken. The magic of this project is how well everyone worked together. KLD’s vision was bold, daring and innovative and required a lot of specialisation and commitment. Whether it was luck or whether you make your luck, everybody came on board and shared the vision. The devil was in the detail. Now each room in the hotel has beautiful finishes, art on the wall, stylish furniture and finishes. The common area is impactful, fun, suited to its audience and caters for a range of facilities. Hatch is the next evolution in student living.
Check our this article in Wallpaper Online magazine which features the The Hatch Rooms.
Collaborators
Client ………………………………………………Hatch
Architects…………………………………………Reddy Architecture
Contractor ………………………………………John Paul Construction
QS & Project Management………….. KSN
Joinery ……………………………………………Greengate Joinery
3D Render ……………………………………..3D Design Bureau