Project Summary
Club Quarters Hotel Covent Garden, Holborn offered a rare design opportunity: two underused, windowless basement floors presented not as a problem, but as a prompt.
No natural light. No gravity drainage. No preconceptions.
A blank slate. A live prototype. A chance to reimagine what a hotel room could be—how it works, how it feels, and the value it delivers to guest and operator alike. From this space of creative freedom, MAAPS developed a new room type for the business traveller. A refined spatial prototype—tested, proven, and now delivering tangible returns.
“We were designing for people who live between places.”
And we wanted the room to signal stillness in the midst of motion.
Purpose-Built for the Business Nomad
These rooms are the distilled result of two decades of evolution at Club Quarters, shaped by the understated brilliance of founder Ralph Bahna.
Ralph’s ethos—clarity, utility, modesty, and first-principle thinking—resonates deeply in an age that too often mistakes surface for substance.
His vision always began with the guest. At MAAPS, we extended that ethos through close observation—imagining the traveller in motion: arriving late, fatigued, needing to reset, to prepare, to pause.
The rooms feel inclusive by design. Efficient, gracious, and free of friction.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the bathrooms, where ledges, lighting, and surfaces respond to real use. The business traveller – more than half of whom are female – expects discretion and clarity, but also grace.
Crafted Like a Cabin, Composed Like a Studio
Rather than deny the basement condition, we embraced it.
The rooms take cues from yacht interiors—compact yet complete, composed below the waterline. Every element has a purpose. Every detail, intention.
- Bespoke joinery shapes the room with confidence.
- Plane tree veneers, dark oak boards, solid metal hardware.
- Portland stone, pigeon grey, ink, soot, and steel blue.
- Lighting is ambient, layered, never glaring.
Composed. Considered. Restful.
Elegantly Engineered, Technically Resolved
What appears effortless is, in fact, precise.
- Vacuum drainage, drawn from maritime precedent—ensuite bathrooms without slab penetrations.
- Vertical A/C cabinets—clean, quiet, concealed.
- Lighting modes that transition from task to unwind with intuitive ease.
Every design decision serves both guest and operator: clear, calm, maintainable.
Dual Revenue, Singular Simplicity
Three rooms feature a second identity:
- By day, a private meeting room or workspace.
- By night, a serene guestroom.
A custom fold-away bed is integrated within cabinetry, deploying without mechanical fuss or compromise.
No theatrics. No Murphy Bed compromises.
Internal windows with sliding privacy blinds allow corridor light to enter the room, while giving the guest a quiet sense of control.
Subterranean, Yet Still in London
In the guest corridor, a custom glass louvre artwork draws inspiration from the plane trees of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Embedded video monitors show live feeds of the world above: light, weather, clouds, a passing shower.
A quiet link to the city above.
That visual reference complements the room’s quiet acoustic connection to the city—a faint, low continuity that reminds you where you are.
Design ROI: 20% Revenue Uplift — and Quiet Loyalty
The Club and Alumni rooms now operate at a 20% revenue premium over CQ’s standard inventory.
Guest loyalty is high. Repeat stays are common. The emotional return matches the financial one: these rooms work, and they work quietly.
Club Quarters’ owner-operator model created space for experimentation. MAAPS brought the ability to design through insight, not assumption—to shape constraint into clarity.
Design not as decoration, but as reimagined utility.
A Quiet Tribute to Ralph Bahna
These rooms resist ornament in favour of something more enduring. They honour Ralph Bahna’s legacy:
That the heart of hospitality is empathy, expressed through thoughtful and modest design.
Let’s reimagine your space.
