First Look: The Ace Hotel Toronto’s New Rooftop Bar Evangeline

When the extended-awaited Ace Lodge Toronto finally opened this summer season, it turned an instant cultural feeling (not to mention the cover star of our September/Oct concern). Intended by Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, the setting up is an spectacular harmony of brawny concrete and woodsy detailing, with its cantilevered foyer bar and sunken dining place each taking care of to truly feel concurrently grand and intimate. 

But the well-liked downtown desired destination however has one more trick up its sleeve — all the way up on the 14th flooring, to be exact. On Friday, the Ace Resort Toronto debuted its rooftop bar, Evangeline. One more neighborhood institution in the earning, it supplies the ending contact to a landmark architectural undertaking that can now be admired in its entirety.

Named immediately after the to start with element-length movie to be manufactured in Canada, Evangeline appears to be destined to engage in an primarily outstanding job on the TIFF social calendar. That claimed, Torontonians will be pleased to listen to it also options to host open-to-absolutely everyone DJ evenings and dance events all calendar year extended, complementing a menu of treats and little dishes by Patrick Kriss (of Michelin star-profitable Alo fame).

As with the Ace Lodge Toronto’s other hospitality spaces, the 80-seat lounge feels as cosmopolitan as it does calming — part downtown penthouse and part rural cabin. Functioning with Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, the Ace Lodge Group’s in-property Atelier Ace style crew developed a color palette that conjures a stroll in the woods on a crisp slide working day, pairing muddy environmentally friendly hues with pick hits of coppery crimson.

Developing on the hotel’s precast brick façade — itself a nod to a single of Toronto’s signature building products, featured through much of the city’s vernacular architecture — Evangeline’s two fireplaces sit below rows of vertical crimson bricks that even more contribute to the space’s rustic warmth.

Brutalist accents continue on a further a person of the Ace Lodge Toronto’s principal motifs. Rugged concrete columns enhance a pair of volumetric wall canvases by Montreal artist David Umemto, put in in this article on either aspect of the room’s northern hearth.

These heavier things distinction the lounge’s light-weight wooden ceilings and wooden-framed furnishings, produced all the a lot more inviting by their marginally vintage glance. A series of patterned rugs solidify the vibe of relaxed domesticity.

A different particularly charming touch is the periscope-esque lighting that extends down from the ceiling. In maintaining with the Ace Hotel’s routine of partnering with regional designer-makers, the rooftop bar’s customized fixtures ended up developed by Toronto studio MSDS.

The 50-seat indoor lounge is joined by a 30-seat outdoor patio that seems to be in excess of a row of grassy planters and out to Toronto’s at any time-evolving skyline.

Evangeline’s inside will take on an specifically intimate ambiance occur sunset, when its caramel tones definitely appear to everyday living. And for people who clearly show up a bit afterwards in the evening, the vivid lights of the towers out the window introduce one more sort of cinematic glow. For site visitors and locals alike, the cozy-fulfills-cosmoplitan place is a testomony to Toronto’s distinctive blend of the worldly, woodsy and whimsical.