Claridge’s Hotel Basement

Overview

Claridge’s, a world-famous five-star hotel in central London, commissioned contractor McGee to construct a five-storey basement beneath the existing hotel without disrupting hotel operations.

With all materials in and out of the site passing through a single window opening, the engineering solution involved mining underneath the existing foundation, hand-digging adits and vertical shafts for each of the 62 five-storey columns and foundations, then constructing the basement top-down.

Jim Mackey (McGee), Andy Pye and Alice Blair (Arup) will tell the structural story behind this incredible feat of construction.

Image shown courtesy of Daniel Imade, Arup