London has a new answer to affordable city-centre stays — and it looks nothing like the hostels that came before it. SODA, the London-based architecture studio, has transformed a former backpacker hostel near Oxford Street into Otherwander Soho, a high-density capsule hotel built around 566 sleeping pods the brand calls “nests.” The result is something closer to a boutique hotel than a budget bed, a place that takes the Japanese capsule typology and reframes it for a generation that refuses to choose between cost and quality.
The building itself carries history. Otherwander occupies a pair of early 20th-century structures close to Oxford Street, and SODA’s approach respects that lineage without being precious about it. The facade references the neighbourhood’s material vernacular — hand-laid arched brick details and corbelled window reveals draw from the surrounding Soho streetscape — while the interiors do not attempt to play it safe. Vibrantly coloured social spaces, curved lines, and warm strip lighting push back against the beige neutrality that defines most budget accommodation. A colourful staircase threads the floors together, giving the building a sense of vertical life.
Designer:
SODA director Ryan Holland was clear about the brief from the start. “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 — people who are design-literate, location-driven, and unwilling to trade aesthetics for a lower room rate. Each nest is private and soundproofed, with the entire guest journey — check-in, room control, checkout — managed through a phone. It’s a frictionless model designed for people who already live this way.
What SODA gets right here is the balance between compression and comfort. The pods are compact by necessity, but the shared spaces are generous in feeling — designed to do the social heavy lifting that a private nest cannot. It’s a deliberate split: retreat into the pod, expand into the communal. The vibrancy of the common areas makes the smallness of the sleeping space feel intentional rather than compromised.
Capsule hotels have existed at the fringes of Western hospitality for years, mostly as novelty or last resort. Otherwander Soho changes the conversation. Located at 92 Dean Street, it plants itself at the centre of one of London’s most culturally loaded postcodes and dares you to think of it as anything less than a destination. SODA hasn’t just renovated a hostel — they’ve made the case that density and design aren’t opposites.
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