by Interior Designer Ürün Albayrak

Novel Centre Point Hotel is located in the city centre of Famagusta and has 183 rooms of varying designs.  I was involved in the project from the very beginning and focused on both its exterior and interior designs. The Novel Centre Point complex consists of three buildings situated within the EMU campus. The project also includes a dormitory and activity centre (health and sports centre) alongside the hotel. The hotel and dormitory are fully operating. However, the third building which will include activity areas such as a gym, indoor squash court and Olympic size swimming pool, is still under construction.

Two sides of this project look out onto the main street and include many commercial units. The commercial areas intersect at the corner of the building where a magnificent entrance was created into the hotel. This was achieved with the natural texture created by cobblestones.

While working on this project the owner and contractor, Uçanok İnşaat, stated that the budget could be pushed in some areas, therefore I used some remarkable pieces to create truly mesmerizing effects. We used mouldable natural stone paper brought from India for the terrace, standing on large-scale giant columns at the entrance. We used LED lights inside the frame of the columns, making it look more similar to a transparent material such as Onyx stone.

We fitted natural wood and linear lighting on the lower surface of the platform standing on the columns. We covered the walls on the side of the stairs with stones, installed a waterfall system and created the feeling of a real waterfall by placing reeds in the pool at the bottom of the fall. We used natural black marble for the stairs and embedded small bracket lights into the side walls.

We placed the reception desk on the round elevated section made under the glass ceiling in the middle of the lobby with black marble flooring. This area is decorated with giant marble pieces in order to make people entering the hotel feel the same splendour as is created outside. The reception wall was formed by shaping a large piece of white vein-less marble with state-of-the-art equipment. İ worked with Deco Mar while creating this feature and they made the pieces exactly the way I wanted them. I placed strip lighting at the bottom of the marble wall to give the texture.

The marble on the reception desk was also cut in an oval shape. The veins on the stone were fitted to follow each other and with this method a one-piece, marble block look was achieved. Management and meeting rooms are located in the secret corridor behind the reception wall.
We used two layers of wood for the columns in the lobby and the upstairs restaurant area. We painted the mdf on the bottom layer black and covered the top layer with natural wood, thin enough to be coiled in dark brown tones. It is possible to reach the upper floor by the lifts or stairs located on both wings of the lobby.

Upstairs there is a restaurant, patisserie and pub. We did not exaggerate the lighting and flooring materials used in the restaurant as much as we did in the lobby. There are two reasons for this. One is the project budget and the other being the fact that the restaurant isn’t the place where people will want to spend their time. They will only be here during meal times, because they will want to run up to the wonderful terrace in the service area of the patisserie to drink their coffee after dinner. Remember that the hotel is located in the city centre and the terrace overlooks Famagusta’s busiest street. Everyone travels through here.

On the other side of the restaurant you will find the pub, which is a representation of British culture, whilst also operating as a sports bar. We have thought of everything so that our guests can enjoy the excitement of the Olympics, major tournaments and football matches (to name but one sport), with their friends. I also enjoy coming here with my friends and watching Formula 1 Races. It has an Irish pub feeling as we used a lot of wood, but it is filled with all the details you would expect to find at a sports bar.

There is an enormous, island bar in the centre, making it much easier to serve customers from all four sides. On busy days, guests may sit at the bar to have easy access to drink services. While creating a pub the right type of high bar stools is essential. Also, another reason for placing the bar in the centre of the building was to hide the huge columns the 8-storey hotel stands on. Instead of placing random posters and prizes on the walls and the bar, we have reserved room for memorabilia from tournaments and matches to be competed for here in the future. So, after a few years, we will be able to feel the true spirit of a real pub.

Corners and ledges with billiards and darts, with a view of the EMU Campus, are higher than the tables in the middle area due to the difference in elevation and the barrel tables on the other side. This was so that all tables have a perfect view of the huge screen on the Wall. In other words, on a match day when all the tables are full, everyone will be able to see the screen without getting in the way of other people. Actually, it’s impossible not to see the screen from any angle; I worked with Edip Electronics on this giant screen system consisting of 9 LG brand LED screens with 0.8 mm pitch. These screens were bought through a private order and can be set to show 9 different broadcasts if desired.  This is the first giant screen set up on the island.

Throughout the facility you can find lift access to each floor, toilets for disabled, an automatic fire response system and central heating/cooling. The washbasins used in the toilets are from Ermatas. I had seen this design a long time ago and had wished for a Project to include them in.

When you look closely, you will see many details and techniques applied for the first time in North Cyprus, all aiming to give you a feeling of tranquillity. I believe it is a large and valuable project and I can see that users and guests feel the same. I would like to take this opportunity to say how proud I am to have undertaken such a project.