Point Conference Centre, Edinburgh, Building, Architect, Project, Images, Design

Point Conference Centre Edinburgh

Point Hotel Conference Centre, Edinburgh by Andrew Doolan

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Point Conference Centre

Location: Point Hotel – 32 & 34 Bread St, Edinburgh
Date built: 1997-99
Andrew Doolan Architects

Point Conference Centre, Edinburgh
Point Conference Centre : image © Adrian Welch

Andrew Doolan’s empire grows with the minimal but playful addition of the Point Conference Centre next-door-but-one. The intervention is bold and integrates well into the street with a roof terrace stepping back above, topped off with a simple canopy.

Point Hotel Edinburgh
Point Conference Centre : image © Adrian Welch

The ground floor reception desk is simple and elegant, extending as far as the generous circulation zone which runs down the western third of the plan to the lift. The roof terrace includes a sheltered external portion hinting at Le Corbusier’s Paris rooftop garden with its rectilinear hedges. To the front there is a calming pebble zone: superb views of the Castle and New Town are thus taken from behind the fully-glazed building line.

Point Conference Centre, Edinburgh
Point Conference Centre: image from the Point Hotel / Andrew Doolan Architects

The building has a double facade – a winter garden (or environmental wall) – which allows for surreal views of individual conference room doors [Keith Hunter photos above & below]. Materials used are similiar to the Point and Mondboddo’s: long sliding facades of glass and coloured perspex. This building marks a piece of architecture that is sophisticated by day, exciting and dynamic by night.

The Point Hotel, Bread St, Edinburgh
Andrew Doolan Architects

Point Conference Centre: image from the Point Hotel / Andrew Doolan Architects

Andrew Doolan was both the developer and the architect of the scheme and part-owned the Point Hotel, the Conference Centre and the City Travel Inn before his untimely death in 2004.

Travel Inn Edinburgh:

photograph : Steffen Schefer

Edinburgh Hotels

Edinburgh Walking Tours

For the first few years of the RIAS Architecture Award – sponsored by former Point Hotel owner Andrew Doolan – the Awards ceremony was held at the top of The Point Conference Centre: Best Building in Scotland