The Emory - London's First All-Suite Hotel Arrives At Hyde Park Corner With Damien Hirst Art

There's a building at Hyde Park Corner that looks like it's trying to set sail. All glass and steel outriggers, semi-suspended on anti-vibration bearings to absorb the tremors of the Piccadilly Line rumbling underneath - it's one of the last projects from the late architect Richard Rogers, the man behind the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

That it took nearly two decades from conception to completion gives you some sense of the ambition involved. The result, The Emory, is London's first all-suite hotel, operated by Maybourne - the group behind Claridge's, The Connaught, and The Berkeley next door - and it arrives with Damien Hirst sculptures in the courtyard, a Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant, and a subterranean wellness club that charges non-members a rather startling annual fee.

It's unapologetically rarefied, but somehow doesn't feel like it's trying too hard. That, in London's current luxury hotel arms race, is something of an achievement.

Location

The Emory occupies a quietly strategic corner of London - literally, Hyde Park Corner - with the park itself visible from almost every floor and Knightsbridge a short walk west. Buckingham Palace is a stroll to the east.

For all the neighborhood prestige, the hotel's entrance is notably understated: a side street called Old Barracks Yard, barely signposted, with a modest glass reception box that you might walk straight past. That's entirely intentional. The word the hotel uses again and again is "discretion," and the location plays into it - central without being brash, connected without being chaotic.

Having one of London's great green spaces practically at the door is a genuine asset, particularly when you're several floors up and the park begins to look like it belongs to you.

The Courtyard

Past the reception box, before you've even made it to the elevator, is The Courtyard - a ground-floor space designed by Rémi Tessier, the super-yacht designer who has handled all of The Emory's public areas. At its center is a cascading tree, and the whole thing manages to feel like an indoor-outdoor pause between the street and the hotel proper.

It also happens to be where you'll encounter two Damien Hirst sculptures: a feminine humanoid insect and a skinless man holding a pair of scissors. Hirst's work continues throughout the building, including floral paintings made over AI-generated images in the restaurant.

abc kitchens

The Emory's main restaurant is an offshoot of Jean-Georges Vongerichten's three ABC restaurants in New York - abc kitchen, abcV, and abc cocina - condensed and reimagined for a single London space. Designed by Rémi Tessier with a glass facade facing Hyde Park and Knightsbridge, it sits at street level but elevated above it, all wavy wooden banquettes and floor-to-ceiling windows. Damien Hirst is on the walls here too.

The kitchen, run by chef Benjamin Boeynaems, leans into British ingredients applied to the kind of organically-inflected, globally-influenced menu that Jean-Georges has been refining for decades - Dorset crab toast, Orkney scallop tartare with shiso and kohlrabi, south coast John Dory in a herby broth.

There are also pork confit tacos, black truffle pizzas, and the spring pea guacamole that apparently was a favorite of Barack Obama. Nobody's pretending this is reinventing anything, but the food is well-executed and the room is genuinely enjoyable to be in.

Weekend brunch leans into New York references pretty enthusiastically - a bacon, egg, and cheese pizza called the B.E.C., cardamom Dutch baby pancakes, jalapeño margaritas, and Bloody Marys. There's also a private dining room called The Market Table, which seats up to ten, with an optional curtain for privacy, and draws its inspiration from the seasonal produce philosophy that Jean-Georges built his reputation on.

The Emory Cigar Merchants

Up on the rooftop, separate from the bar, The Emory Cigar Merchants occupies what might be the city's most atmospherically committed cigar lounge. The collection is curated by Blue Curran, who holds the title of Master of Havana Cigars - the highest cigar accreditation in the UK - and who was named Cigar Sommelier of the Year at the 2024 Boisdale Annual Cigar Awards.

The room's floor-to-ceiling windows frame London's skyline while an advanced extraction system keeps everything comfortable. Tessier designed this space too, and the interiors are characteristically striking.

If you want to pair a cigar with a spirit, the hotel offers a bespoke experience matching hand-rolled cigars with spirits selected to complement them.

The Emory Rooftop Bar

The tenth floor is where The Emory gets its most openly indulgent - and guests-only. The rooftop bar, again by Tessier, leans into a mid-century aesthetic: circular leather swivel chairs, a rotating cigar cabinet, the overall effect somewhere between a Stanley Kubrick set and a 1960s private members' club. It has a retractable roof.

Argentinian bartender Renato "Tato" Giovannoni - considered one of the most celebrated bartenders in South America - periodically returns with seasonal menus featuring his own cocktail creations. The minimum spend policy and no-reservation rule ensure it stays relatively manageable.

No reservations accepted, and a minimum spend applies. What you get in return is an unobstructed, 360-degree panorama of London - the full sweep from the park below to the wider city beyond, uninterrupted by anything tall enough to compete. On a clear evening, it's one of the better views the city offers from a hotel bar.

The Suites: Nine Floors, Four Designers, One Cohesive Vision

The Emory has 61 suites and studios across nine floors, each pair of floors handed to a different designer: André Fu, Pierre Yves Rochon, Alexandra Champalimaud, and Patricia Urquiola each took two floors, with Rémi Tessier handling the public areas and Rigby & Rigby designing the penthouse.

The result is a building where the corridors change character as you move between floors, and where suites that share an identical floor plan can feel meaningfully different from one another. Floors can also be made interconnecting, which means families or groups can effectively occupy a private floor of up to eight linked suites.

Corner Park Suite

The Corner Park Suite is where The Emory's all-suite concept starts - and it's already a lot of room. At 75 square meters, it comes with a Juliet balcony and floor-to-ceiling views of Hyde Park and the red-brick streets below. The suites on these floors have been designed by four different hands - Champalimaud, Urquiola, Rochon, and Fu - which means the interiors vary in mood and palette, some restrained, others bolder. All feature a dedicated dressing area and a spacious sitting room.

Every stay includes daily English breakfast, a fully stocked minibar, access to Surrenne Belgravia, and your own Emory Assistant on call around the clock.

Hyde Park Balcony Suite

At 105 square meters, the Hyde Park Balcony Suite steps up in scale and - with its private balcony and unobstructed park views - in atmosphere. These suites were designed by André Fu and Alexandra Champalimaud, and the collaboration reads clearly: the spaces are contemporary but warm, with natural light used as a design element almost as much as the materials themselves.

You enter into a bright, generous living area where the floor-to-ceiling windows immediately pull your attention toward the park. The light here, depending on the time of day, can be remarkable - green and diffuse in summer, sharper and more architectural in winter. The sitting room is arranged around this, comfortable enough to actually spend time in rather than just pass through.

The dining area, adjacent to the living space, provides a proper six-seater table and opens onto the balcony - a private outdoor space that's small but genuinely usable, positioned to make the most of the Hyde Park outlook.

The bedroom is separated from the living areas by a door, which makes more difference than it sounds in terms of how the suite actually functions as a space. It's more compact than the living room, but the same floor-to-ceiling windows carry through, and the main bathroom offers a freestanding bath, a Toto toilet, and double vanity.

Emory Park Suite

The two-bedroom Emory Park Suite, at 200 square meters, was designed by André Fu, and it shows - clean lines, subtle color, a geometry that feels precise without being cold. This is a proper apartment-scale suite: two super king beds, two full bathrooms plus a guest WC, space for up to five people, and a private balcony with Hyde Park views that, from this elevation, start to feel genuinely expansive.

The living areas are organized around floor-to-ceiling glass, with the park laid out below in a way that makes the suite feel both connected to the city and entirely apart from it. Fu's characteristic restraint means the luxury here is in materials and proportion rather than gesture - the smooth mechanics of every drawer, the quality of finishes, the way natural light moves through the space across the day.

The bedroom, in a suite of this scale, functions as its own proper retreat - separated enough from the living areas to feel genuinely private, with the same quality of light and the same attention to detail. Both en-suite bathrooms offer a freestanding marble bath and rainfall shower.

The Emory Penthouse

The penthouse occupies the entire top floor of The Emory. Designed by Rigby & Rigby, it covers 300 square meters with expansive terraces accessible from every room - this is the literal realization of Richard Rogers' original vision for the building, and at this height, the panoramas extend across Hyde Park and the broader London skyline in every direction.

The living area is large enough to function as an event space - open-plan, contemporary, crafted with the kind of attention to material and finish that makes it feel expensive without announcing itself. The Penthouse can host a private dinner for eight in its separate dining room, and a dedicated dressing room and private gym - equipped with a Peloton, yoga mats, and PENT. weights - mean you can live here almost entirely self-sufficiently if the mood takes you.

The two en-suite bedrooms are where the Penthouse earns its quieter credentials. Each is a proper retreat in its own right - generous enough to feel unhurried, private enough to feel genuinely separate from the living spaces. The craftsmanship throughout is deliberate and detailed - every surface, every mechanism, every finish chosen to hold up under close inspection.

Each bathroom features a freestanding marble bath and rainfall shower, with a guest WC separate from both. The marble is the kind that rewards attention - cool to the touch, visually calm, and chosen with the same care as everything else in the suite.

The terraces are what make the Penthouse unlike anything else in the building. Accessed from every room, they wrap the top floor in open-air space at a height where London's skyline becomes something you can take stock of rather than just glimpse. Hyde Park stretches out below. On a clear evening, the city extends far enough in every direction to make the scale of it genuinely impressive.

Surrenne Belgravia

Included with every stay, Surrenne Belgravia occupies four subterranean floors beneath The Emory and functions as both a hotel amenity and a private members' club for non-guests. The design is by Rémi Tessier, and the brief was apparently longevity - the kind of wellness operation that starts with full medical checkups and involves an advisory board that includes Harvard geneticist David Sinclair and clinical psychologist Shauna Shapiro.

Nutrition programs are developed by Rosemary Ferguson; skincare by New York plastic surgeon Lara Devgan. There's a hyperbaric chamber. An AI-generated soundtrack plays throughout that apparently never repeats itself, which is either brilliant or unsettling depending on your disposition.

The Yoga Room

An entire floor of Surrenne is dedicated to Tracy Anderson, the celebrity fitness trainer, and her signature method. Alongside this is a yoga room with a go-anywhere projection screen - flexible enough to accommodate different instructors and formats, and designed to remove the usual institutional feel of hotel gym annexes. Classes are available to you for the duration of your stay.

The treatment rooms are finished in marble and come with Alice Temperley robes - floral-printed, generous, and the kind of thing you'll briefly consider folding into your suitcase.

The treatments blend what the hotel describes as ancient wisdom with current wellness science, which in practice means four-hand massages with adaptogenic chakra oils, Ashiatsu bodywork - in which a therapist uses gymnastic ceiling grips to work across your back with both hands and feet - revitalizing facials, and full-body wet room therapies. The therapists include staff who transferred from The Berkeley.

The 22-meter pool is the architectural centerpiece of Surrenne - illuminated by a skylight during the day, and by candlelight in the evening, with underwater speakers providing a soundtrack as you swim. Gold leaf lines the ceiling above, catching and scattering the light that filters down from above.

Rémi Tessier's cabanas provide poolside privacy; the steam room nearby cycles through aromatic scents - jasmine, eucalyptus, orange blossom, musk - each selected for a specific effect on the senses.