How we created the best-loved backpacker hostel in London

Wombat's Hostel

How we created the best-loved backpacker hostel in London


Number of guests 640
Floor area added 300sqm (3,230 sqft)
Built in 1830 as The Sailor's Home

Wombats is one of our longest-running projects, as we add new chapters to the life of a site with its own long history. The nineteenth-century building was originally a seaman’s mission, a pitstop for sailors in the merchant navy who came ashore from the nearby docks. It’s now home to one of London’s most loved backpacker hostels.

This is the first UK hostel for Wombats, which has branches across mainland Europe, and we have collaborated with them on numerous phases of work to reposition and improve the building, starting with its initial refurbishment. The older mission building has a large 1960s extension, and an important move was to improve wayfinding and connection between the two. We made the elegant central staircase into a feature, restoring the balustrade and the glazed bricks to the landing windows.

A core differentiator for Wombats is the high quality of the accommodation, and we worked with the existing plan to make generous and flexible rooms, mainly for 2-4 people, as well as several dorm spaces. We kept as much of the original fabric as possible, highlighting historic elements such as the Victorian columns and the 1960s concrete structure. In the basement we restored the brick vaults as the backdrop to a new café and bar.

Creating a warm, lively identity was also important. Wombats prides itself on catering to lone travellers, and we collaborated to create shared spaces where hostellers could be at home, socialising when they want to but always feeling safe. We designed a bar, for example, with corners that act as mini barriers, making it easy to strike up conversations while maintaining your own space, and communal areas that mix standing space, tables and day beds.

Social media plays a big part in this identity too, and implicit in successive briefs has been the need for Instagram-able ‘moments’ throughout the building. We’ve collaborated with the interior designer to make spaces that immediately place the hostel in London without resorting to tired cliches. The bespoke and vintage furniture is upholstered in patterned fabric used elsewhere for seating on the tube, and the bar is made from 500-year-old reclaimed oak.