The 123-room Ace Hotel, which opened its doors on July 26, is the stylish U.S. hospitality chain’s first location in Canada
The Ace Hotel's main entrance on Camden Street cuts through a facade made up of brick-fronted panels.A shimmering slab of brick and glass rises up from the corner of Brant and Camden Streets. Thirteen storeys tall, the structure is easy to overlook – until you notice the long ribbon of steel and Douglas fir that winds across the main façade and fans out like a carpet above the entrance.
When this project began a half-decade ago, I wondered how the architects’ sensibility would mesh with the budget requirements of a hotelier and developers; the project is a partnership between Ace and local real-estate companies Zinc Developments and Alterra. “We are Canadians, and we work to capture a sense of place,” Ms. Shim said. “In this case that means speaking to the neighbourhood, the form and the materials of that place.”
“We aim to have it feel a bit like your cool friend’s apartment,” said Little Wing Lee, design director with the in-house agency Atelier Ace. “You can’t tell whether this particular element is from 1963 or from 1971. It’s timeless.” Ms. Shim reports that the relationship with Ace was “simpatico.” But she also points out that her firm was involved in every aspect of the design. This is unusual. Boutique design firms such as Shim-Sutcliffe generally hand off their work to colleagues, the “architects of record,” who resolve the endless issues that come with construction.
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