This four-storey 1920s Art Deco style building in the Little India Conservation Area was once the Hong Wen School. Today, repurposed as the hip and playful Wanderlust Hotel, its resurrection effort is an illustration of creativity and good adaptive reuse of a rare and unorthodox beauty.

Accentuating The Past

The triumph of this project lies in the way the project team had given the revitalised old building a new sense of place within the eclectic urban montage of Little India. Most of the architectural elements on the external envelope, such as the intricately painted ceramic tiles on its front façade and the classic stained glass windows at the upper storeys, have been restored with the precision of professionals who genuinely care about the face that this historical building presents to the world. This restraint is further demonstrated by the simple use of subtle colours and strategic lightings that direct attention to the unique inherited features of the property.

From Old To New

Keeping the property’s original structural grid intact, the project team reworked the old school layout by creating various room types and sizes on each floor. Each floor was designed by different interior decorators, each with contrasting themes, furnishings and colours. No two rooms are the same.

In all, 29 hotel rooms, a new roof deck garden with a jacuzzi and restaurant were incorporated. Internally, the timber railings on the staircases as well as extensive green marble flooring were brought back to life with great care and attention to detail. Several charming pieces of history, such as the recovered colourful ceramic tiles on the first storey, were not cast away but feted as a framed decorative wall art.

Elements of Surprise

The functional elements of a modern-day hotel have also been smartly subsumed into the final development. One of these is the new lift core which was added to the original and revitalised airwell to provide easy accessibility to the rooms above. To create a statement, the brickwork of one of the walls around the airwell was exposed and landscaping introduced within it.

Extensive micro piling was required to reinforce the structure for its new purpose – a complex task obviously executed with great care and dexterity. The retention of the airwell preserves an important element of the building’s past while serving the original purpose of bringing natural daylight into the heart of the hotel. Another unexpected joy is the new roof deck. With the clearing away of the unsightly air-conditioning units at the rear of the building, a new uber chic rooftop sundeck has been created, tucked behind the authentic envelope of the building.

All in all, this is a clever transformation of an old urban school building to a new and more viable hotel use.