BANKSIDE HOTEL REVIEW: ART, DESIGN AND A CREATIVE STAY IN LONDON
BANKSIDE HOTEL: A CREATIVE STAY ON LONDON’S SOUTH BANK
With a working artist’s studio, interiors by Dayna Lee and a bar worth coming back to, Bankside brings London’s cultural quarter indoors.
The welcome came with an IPA. A small gesture, perhaps, but a good introduction to a hotel that makes friendliness feel as important as the furniture. Bankside has plenty to look at, yet it was the staff who first made us feel we had chosen well.
Later, the bar manager would make an equally convincing impression. It was Negroni month, which provided a perfectly reasonable excuse to explore a few variations before an excellent Old Fashioned rounded things off. His name, unfortunately, escaped us. The drinks did their job.
That easy hospitality matters here. Bankside takes art and design seriously, but it is also somewhere you can settle in, order another drink and enjoy yourself.
Set just back from the Thames near Blackfriars Bridge, the hotel occupies a particularly useful position for a cultural weekend. Tate Modern lies east along the river; the National Theatre, BFI Southbank, Hayward Gallery and Southbank Centre are in the other direction. The Globe and Borough Market extend the possibilities further. You could fill several days without spending much time underground.
The surprise is how much there is to discover before leaving the building.
Opened in 2018, Bankside belongs to Marriott’s Autograph Collection, with 161 rooms and suites and interiors conceived by Los Angeles-based designer Dayna Lee. Her vision was an “art school without the dust”: a sociable environment where paintings, ceramics, furniture and useful objects could sit comfortably together. The hotel’s permanent Art Yard Maker’s Studio gives that idea substance, providing space for a changing roster of artists through its partnership with Contemporary Collective.
Lee’s background in film-set design helps explain the attention to composition. Mid-century furniture, sculptural objects and contrasting textures give the public spaces the feel of a collection assembled over time. Shelves of pottery draw the eye; seating is arranged for conversation. There is polish, certainly, but enough variation to keep you looking. British Vogue’s review picked out the combination of exposed concrete, mid-century furnishings and eclectic artwork, and it remains a useful description of the hotel’s visual character.
For anyone who travels with galleries, architecture and design shops on the itinerary, the working studio is the strongest reason to choose Bankside. A hotel can acquire a collection. Giving an artist room to work creates a different relationship, allowing guests to encounter the decisions and experiments behind the finished piece. The studio operates an open-house policy, with opportunities to see artists at work when they are present.
Lana Matsuyama was the artist connected with our stay, and her relationship with Bankside offers a particularly interesting example of where these encounters can lead. The Japanese-American artist works with repetition, texture and layered surfaces, drawing on architecture, urban life and Japanese aesthetics. Her original residency ran during summer 2023.
A collaboration with the hotel’s culinary team helped open another creative direction for Matsuyama: cooking. She subsequently developed kuchisabi as an outlet for exploring food with the same curiosity she brings to materials. It is a story worth following beyond the hotel, how a residency can influence a practice in ways that were never part of the original plan.
Her work returned to Bankside in the 2026 exhibition Material Worlds, alongside artists exploring painting, textiles, sculpture and mixed media. Presented in the White Box space, it brought former residents back into the building, extending the relationship beyond their time in the studio. That continuity gives the programme more interest than a succession of unrelated exhibitions.
Upstairs, the bedrooms offer a calmer setting without abandoning the hotel’s interest in design. Bankside describes them as residential in character, with eclectic furnishings, workspaces and practical charging points. The entry-level Modest rooms measure 21–25 square metres; Deluxe rooms provide 27, while the Artist and Collector suites offer approximately 41 and 50 square metres respectively. Family rooms have two queen beds, a useful option for a shared London weekend.
There are playful touches, too. Corridor vending machines supply drinks and unexpected extras, including sunglasses, adding a little curiosity to the usual hotel provisions. Water-refill stations provide a more practical reason to venture out of the room. The appeal is in making everyday details feel considered without requiring guests to make a ceremony of them.
Art Yard Bar & Kitchen continues the conversation downstairs. Designer Dayna Lee commissioned illustrator and ceramicist Laura Carlin to tell stories of the South Bank through a mural translated into hand-painted tiles. Elsewhere, geometric tiling takes inspiration from Gio Ponti. There is a pleasing connection between what surrounds the table and the neighbourhood outside.
The restaurant’s approach is informal, with seasonal British and European influences across small plates, larger dishes and food to share. It works as a place to pause between exhibitions or return to after an afternoon out. Our strongest memory, though, belongs to the bar: excellent cocktails, a knowledgeable manager and the sort of relaxed conversation that makes staying in feel like a worthwhile part of the trip.
That is Bankside’s advantage. Its location gives you access to some of London’s great cultural institutions, while the hotel introduces creativity on a more personal scale. You can spend the morning looking at a major exhibition and return to see somebody working through a new idea in the studio.
For Fused, that is what makes a creative stay rewarding: the chance to move between seeing, meeting and discovering, with enough comfort to enjoy the gaps. Bankside offers all three. And, on the evidence of our visit, a very good Old Fashioned.
Bankside Hotel, 2 Blackfriars Road, Upper Ground, London SE1 9JU.
