Bespoke Glass Fireplace at W Hotel London’s The Perception
Inside W London: Creating a Bespoke Glass Fireplace for The Perception Bar
Some fireplace projects begin with the selection of a model. Others begin with an idea that doesn't yet exist.
When Modus was approached to deliver the fireplace for The Perception at W London, the brief called for the latter: a completely bespoke, floor-to-ceiling glass fireplace that would become an architectural focal point within one of the hotel's key social spaces.
With almost 40 years of experience creating bespoke fireplaces, Modus was brought in for its ability to take an ambitious design concept and resolve both the aesthetic and technical challenges required to make it work.
A fireplace designed to be seen from every angle
Rather than sitting conventionally against a wall, the fireplace was conceived as a tall, tubular structure extending from floor to ceiling.
Fully enclosed in glass, its cylindrical form allows the fire to remain visually connected to the surrounding bar while giving the installation a sculptural quality of its own. Achieving that simplicity was anything but straightforward.
The enclosure required two bespoke semi-circular panels of curved toughened glass, manufactured specifically for the fireplace. With minimal visual interruption around the fire, the glass allows the flame and the strong vertical form of the fireplace to remain the focus.
The result sits somewhere between fireplace, architectural feature and piece of functional sculpture.
Bespoke design has to work
For Modus, however, creating a bespoke fireplace is never simply about achieving the initial visual impact.
Every element also has to function in the real world. In a busy hospitality environment such as W London, the fireplace needed to remain accessible for ongoing servicing and maintenance without compromising the purity of the design.Modus therefore engineered the glass enclosure so that it could hinge open, providing access to the internal fireplace while maintaining the appearance of a seamless glass cylinder when closed.
It is a detail most guests will never notice, but one that demonstrates the technical thinking required behind genuinely bespoke fireplace design.
When an off-the-shelf fireplace isn't enough
Hospitality projects frequently present challenges that cannot be solved by specifying a standard fireplace and adapting the surrounding interior around it. Scale, materials, sightlines, guest safety, maintenance, heat management and the relationship between the fireplace and the architecture all have to be considered.
At The Perception, the fireplace needed to feel entirely integrated into the design of the space while also standing confidently as a focal point in its own right. That combination of design ambition and technical complexity is precisely where Modus's bespoke capability comes into play.
Rather than being restricted by a catalogue of predetermined sizes and configurations, Modus can develop fireplaces around the architecture, adapting scale, proportion, materials and technical details to meet the individual brief.
Fire as part of the hospitality experience
The W London project also demonstrates something increasingly important in hospitality design: a fireplace does not need to be positioned against a wall or treated as a decorative addition to a finished room. Fire can occupy the architecture itself. Used in this way, it can create a natural point of focus, bring movement and atmosphere into a large social space and provide guests with something memorable.
For The Perception, that meant taking the familiar idea of a fireplace and transforming it into a dramatic floor-to-ceiling glass feature designed specifically for its surroundings. For Modus, it is exactly the kind of brief the company has spent almost four decades solving.
When the fireplace brief isn't ordinary, neither is the solution.
Take a look at more of our hospitality projects here and get in touch if you're working on something that we could support on. If you can conceive it, Modus can deliver it.
