In conversation with: Mark Bruce, Architect of the Year 2021

Mark Bruce Architect of the Year
730 565 Hamish Kilburn
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In conversation with: Mark Bruce, Architect of the Year 2021

EPR Architects’ Mark Bruce – recently crowned Architect of the Year at The Brit List Awards 2021 – invites Editor Hamish Kilburn inside the studio doors to discuss the make up of the multi-award-winning NoMad London, as well as some of the masterpiece projects that are currently on the boards…

Mark Bruce Architect of the Year

In the second video as part of our four-part series where we interview a handful of the winners of The Brit List Awards 2021 we meet Mark Bruce, Main Board Director of EPR Architects.

Bruce heads up the hotels and hospitality team with extensive experience across the hospitality sector, and particular expertise with listed buildings, refurbishments and resort hotels.

> Click here to watch the full 7-minute interview between Mark Bruce and Hotel Designs’ Hamish Kilburn on the GROHE X platform.

Whether designing efficient hotel and bedroom layouts, revitalising grand hotel buildings, repurposing a retired ship in to a unique stay-over destination or designing an exclusive and homely 40-key ranch in the New Mexico Desert, Bruce brings a particular flair with an informed, yet inventive, commercial approach.

The NoMad brand arrived in London last year to a flood of heart-warming reviews. The hotel’s architecture, envisioned by EPR Architects with its clients, Sydell Group, aptly compliments the interior design and overall look, envisioned by New York-based interior design studio Roman and Williams. The new hotel breathes life into the grade II-listed building that was famously known as The Bow Street Magistrates’ Court and Police Station.

It was this hotel, along with the projects that are on the boards, including Raffles London, Six Senses London and many more, that impressed the judges to unanimously vote Bruce as Architect of the Year in 2021.

Ballroom inside NoMad London

Image caption: Ballroom inside Nomad London. | Image credit: Simon Upton Interiors

Bruce is a qualified architect (RIBA) and was educated at both the Mackintosh School of Architecture at the Glasgow School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art where his passion for truly transformative and regenerative projects was first nurtured. He immediately found that a career in hospitality design allowed him to combine this passion with his love of remarkable buildings and interest in hotel architecture within a sector that demanded bespoke and thought-provoking solutions.

Since then, he has dedicated his career to specialising in hotel design and delivery working with many of the mainstream hotel brands as well as having the opportunity to use his skills in undertaking a number of unique hospitality project.

Standing as one of the architecture firm’s most ambitious projects, EPR Architects is working with a handful of leading interior designers to convert London’s Old War Offices in Whitehall into a luxury development, which will shelter Raffles Hotels and Resorts’ debut hotel.

The narrative continues…

Main image credit: EPR Architects

Hamish Kilburn / 17.02.2022

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