Grand Hotel, Birmingham, UK
Saving a building “which couldn’t be saved”
Decades’ worth of previous repairs had added layers of cement, paint, resin and other materials to the entire façade of this Grade II* listed hotel. The stone was decaying dramatically beneath. Estimates for restoration had been prohibitively expensive and the building’s owner Hortons’ Estate was close to appealing against its listing in order to demolish it.
Instead, Arup concluded that the work was possible at a fraction of the cost. We designed and specified the sensitive conservation work which followed, ensuring the building’s survival and unlocking its commercial future.
The repair work was delivered on site by specialist stonemasons using local labour and materials. Traditional tools and techniques were used to re-carve, repair and finish almost every piece of stone by hand. Historic England remarked at the time that it was the largest-scale traditional stonemasonry project they had seen outside of the ecclesiastical sector.
After almost twenty years of lying empty, and escaping a very real threat of demolition, the building reopened as a luxury hotel in 2021.
