Ace Hotel Toronto opens its doors
Canada’s first Ace Hotel has opened in Toronto within a newbuild designed by Shim-Sutcliffe Architects.
The 123-key ground up project is located in the city’s historic Garment District, a neighbourhood ignited by innovation and industry at the start of the 20th century, once a manufacturing centre that grew into an influential artistic hub.
The robust, solid architecture was designed to convey timelessness, and blend into its surroundings. Shim-Sutcliffe Architects’ work — imbued with modesty, honesty, and an appreciation of place, as exemplified by the studio’s famed Integral House — evokes a Canadian spirit and feeling.
The building’s red brick facade recalls the role that bricks pressed from Don Valley clay played in forming the city’s visual identity, and guests entering the lobby catch a glimpse of Horizon Line, a three-story site-specific art installation abstractly representing Lake Ontario’s glittering waters, designed by A. Howard Sutcliffe.
The Lobby, clad in red oak lining and inspired in form by a wooden tray, is suspended by slender steel rods from these massive supports and offers guests a variety of viewpoints and scales within the impressive space. With a sun-dappled seating area replete with vintage and custom Atelier Ace furnishings, and views overlooking the neighbourhood green space St. Andrew’s Playground Park, The Lobby is rich with texture and warmth, offering space for life to take place.
A meeting of rough-hewn textures and sleek comforts, the hotel’s interiors, designed by Atelier Ace, take their cues from the city’s legacy of manufacturing and textiles as well as Ontario’s landscape of dense forests and looping riverways. Ace Toronto’s original art program features pieces by nearly 40 artists, the majority of whom share ties to the city. The far-reaching works enrich the hotel’s public and private spaces and glow of humanity.
Conceived as restful urban cabins, the guestrooms are furnished with Douglas fir panelling, copper accents, custom Shim-Sutcliffe lighting and side tables, and deep-set window benches built into the structure offering connection to the city’s shifting seasons and light.
“Long a leading global light for its forward-thinking approach to city-making and design, Toronto is a city that embraces originality and is rooted in the same open-to-all philosophy that founded Ace,” says Brad Wilson, CEO, Atelier Ace / Ace Hotel Group. “We could not be more proud to open Ace Hotel Toronto — the architectural magnificence of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects’ work has created a bona fide wonder. They have built an inherently civic space that respects the neighbourhood’s storied past while nurturing its future.”
