Architect and Builder August/September 2019 | Page 88

Hilton Garden Inn, Mbabane
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
Mbabane Hilton Garden Inn is a 124-room, eight-storey
development in the heart of the capital of Mbabane and
has been designed specifically as an iconic building for
Hilton’s entry into the Eswatini market. 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 of the building, gives the hotel a
presence unique in the urban context of Mbabane.
The main spaces of the hotel have been designed to
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 solely dedicated 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. 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-cochère
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 reinforced by a full-
height internal atrium that forms the central and primary
focus space of the building, overlooked by all the guest-
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room corridors. The central atrium, which houses the
restaurant, bar, lounge, and conference break-out facilities,
also features skylights. These spaces also link to the
ground-floor landscaping and deck spaces via two large
sliding folding doors.
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.
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 deck on the ground floor with trees and
indigenous planting to cool down the building.
Developer & Owner: Public Services Pensions Fund
Architects: Paragon Architects
Quantity Surveyor: QuanTex
Project Managers: APM Consulting;
Crane Construction Consultants
Civil and Structural Engineers:
ED Simelane & Associates
Electrical and Fire Consultants: MA Dlamini
Façade Engineers: Sutherland Engineers
Mechanical Engineers: VMG Consultants
Interior Design: Source IBA
Main Contractors: ADR and Hilton (JV)
SAPOA Awards