Key takeaways
- Otherwander Soho contains 566 sleeping pods, called "nests", converted from a former backpacker hostel at 92 Dean Street near Oxford Street.
- SODA director Ryan Holland said: "The aim was to provide affordable, high-density accommodation without compromising the guest experience."
- The building consists of two early 20th-century structures; the facade uses hand-laid arched brick details and corbelled window reveals drawn from the Soho streetscape.
- Each pod is private and soundproofed, with check-in, room control, and checkout all managed through a phone.
London studio SODA has converted a former backpacker hostel near Oxford Street into Otherwander Soho, a capsule hotel containing 566 private sleeping pods the brand calls "nests."
The project occupies a pair of early 20th-century structures at 92 Dean Street. SODA's facade references the neighbourhood's material vernacular, with hand-laid arched brick details and corbelled window reveals drawn from the surrounding Soho streetscape. The interiors take a different direction: vibrantly coloured social spaces, curved lines, and warm strip lighting replace the neutral palette typical of budget accommodation. A colourful staircase connects the floors.
SODA director Ryan Holland defined the brief in direct terms. "The aim was to provide affordable, high-density accommodation without compromising the guest experience," he told Dezeen.
The target guest is Gen Z and younger independent travellers — design-literate, location-driven, and unwilling to trade aesthetics for a lower room rate. Each nest is private and soundproofed, and the entire guest journey runs through a phone: check-in, room control, and checkout all happen digitally.
The design splits functions between compressed private space and generous shared space. The pods are compact by necessity; the common areas do the social work a private nest cannot. Guests retreat into the pod and expand into the communal areas. According to the project description, the vibrancy of the common rooms makes the smallness of the sleeping spaces feel intentional rather than compromised.
SODA frames the result as closer to a boutique hotel than a budget bed. The studio takes the Japanese capsule typology — which has existed at the margins of Western hospitality for years, mostly as novelty or last resort — and repositions it as a destination in one of London's most culturally loaded postcodes.
The conversion argument is straightforward: density and design are not opposites. A 566-pod building in central Soho, wrapped in brickwork that matches its neighbours and filled with colour, tests whether a generation of travellers will book high-density accommodation they no longer have to apologise for.
Original: sodastudio.co.uk
