Mbabane Hilton Garden Inn by Paragon Group wins at API Awards 2019
 | Mbabane Hilton Garden Inn by Paragon Group wins at API Awards 2019_approved | 41.5 KB | Download |
 Preview | King Mswati III opened the Mbabane Hilton Garden Inn in an official ceremony on 15 October. | 2.12 MB | Download |
 Preview | King Mswati III seen against the main feature of the performance-rated facade design. | 2.07 MB | Download |
 Preview | Members from the Investment Committee of main client the Public Service Pension Fund on the tour. | 2.39 MB | Download |
 Preview | Praise singers accompanied King Mswati III on a tour of the Mbabane Hilton Garden Inn. | 3.19 MB | Download |
 Preview | The Mbabane Hilton Garden Inn won Best Hotel Development at the API Awards 2019. | 2.18 MB | Download |
The API Awards have become a critical benchmark for measuring success for the property industry, affording peer recognition for the world-class work and services being undertaken by design and development companies across Africa.
The award is especially significant in that it is one of Paragon Group’s first projects for an international hotel chain, Director Henning Rasmuss highlights. It also adds to the project’s accolades to date, which include the SAPOA Award 2019 for Innovative Excellence for an International Development.
“The building is already a popular destination for Instagram-savvy Emaswati, and is the background image of choice in many a posted selfie. It has become a talking point, and is seen as a benchmark for what can be achieved in commercial architecture in this African capital city,” Rasmuss comments.
On 15 October, King Mswati III of Eswatini opened the building in an engaging and personal ceremony that included a full tour of all the facilities for himself and his royal entourage, and the sharing of many a personal anecdote. “Praise singers accompanied the King, adding colour and appropriate gravitas to what was a joy-filled occasion,” Rasmuss elaborates.
The design brief for the 124-room, eight-storey development in the heart of the capital was to create an iconic building for Hilton’s entry into Swaziland. The main feature is the performance-rated façade design with undulating and varying sized windows, depending on the orientation. There is also a huge landscaped pool deck on the first floor, with trees and indigenous planting to cool the building down.
Situated up against a hill to the south of the city centre, the building and its landscape deck provide unobstructed views across the valley towards the city. This prominent location, combined with the unique design, gives the hotel a notable presence unique in the urban context of Mbabane. The façade lines mimic the undulating natural landscape of the national capital city.
The main spaces of the hotel create vertical separation and privacy between public and private or guest amenities. The iconic tower portion of the building, with its swooping and undulating feature façade, is architecturally differentiated from the base of the building, and is dedicated solely to hotel guestrooms and hotel facilities.
Public areas on the ground floor include a reception, restaurant, bar, lounge, and conferencing facilities comprising four meeting rooms of varying sizes, with two of the larger rooms separated by sliding-folding doors with the flexibility to become a single large conference room. An additional extension to the conference component of the hotel is already under construction, immediately upon opening, in order to cater for proven demand, Rasmuss reveals.
Reception and the main hotel entrance are located adjacent to the on-grade, on-site guest parking, where guests are greeted with a generous porte-cochere entry. The main guest parking is located to the rear of the site, while additional parking is provided in an existing parkade close by.
The entrance to the building is immediately adjacent to a full-height internal atrium that forms the central and primary focus space of the building, overlooked by all the guest-room corridors. The central atrium, which houses the restaurant, bar, lounge, and conference break-out facilities, also features large sculptural skylights that direct natural daylight deep into the building.
The guestrooms are all accessed via full-height glass scenic lifts leading from the ground-floor lobby. Guest amenities are housed at the first floor, and include a guest laundry and fitness centre that looks out onto the landscaped pool deck, a dedicated guest amenity with a lap pool, low-level children’s swim area and garden.
Completed in April this year for the Buna Group, on behalf of the Swaziland Public Service Pensions Fund (SPSPF), the main contractor was a joint venture between Aveng Grinaker-LTA with Du-Van Developments and Roots Construction, known as the ADR JV.
Ends
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Notes to the Editor
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About the Paragon Group
Paragon, established in October 1997, is an internationally-active African design business, based in Johannesburg. It delivers commercial architecture, masterplanning, interior design, and space planning to visionary clients in all property sectors.
We are committed to Africa, and believe in the future of its cities. Our roots are here. We have much to offer. We are able and agile, and actively participate in the continent’s urban and human development. Paragon is flexible and diverse in its approach to design. Each project is unique and not driven by style, but by lifestyle and a response to user needs. Elegant and efficient planning form the core of our designs. We understand the needs of our clients, and know how to generate ever new architectural forms in a competitive property market.
We are known for hands-on engagement with all opportunities present in the modern global building industry. The true measure of our skill is our ability to engage at all levels and with all players that make up the colourful world of construction and property development. Our buildings look forward. We embrace the future, because we will be a part of it – part of its problems and responsibilities, and part of its great freedoms and achievements.
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