The Royal Hotel is a new hospitality offering in an old 19th C. landmark structure at the center of Picton, Ontario.
INNOVATION
It is designed to be a transporting experience while deeply rooted in the local context. Main parts of the Victorian hotel are disassembled, abstracted, then reassembled in situ. This, combined with a contrasting register of the building’s previous, 19th C. occupation, creates a new hotel experience that benefits from the charged royal contrast between ‘genteel’ and ‘real’ elements. The quintessential ceiling rosette is reinterpreted as a grand mushroom and water ripples in plaster; the Victorian elevator cage is substituted with construction-grade expanded metal; and the traditional fireplace mantles are displaced by furled, delaminated plaster, concrete, and wood, to name a few.
FUNCTIONALITY
The original Victorian structure is reduced at the upper suite floors to allow north and west facing suites to benefit from an abundance of light, this also creates a second level terrace open to hotel guests. The public main floor expands from the sidewalk across to an outdoor porch, garden, and pool that is flanked by the renovated Royal Annex. It is at the ground level where a complex but relaxed arrangement of hospitality offerings allows the general public, alongside hotel guests, to enjoy eating drinking, and gathering in various spaces served by a large, multivalent kitchen. The street-front Counter Bar, and the rear-facing restaurant that spills out onto a restaurant porch are complemented by the more intimate hotel Parlour, Library, and outdoor Garden along the east side.
CREATIVITY
Also instrumental to the design strategy is the petrification of textiles whose patterns and details are rooted in the Victorian era, now expressed in stone, wood, and metal. Custom designed wood screens, embroidered headboards, fluted concrete panels, herringbone, and a tartan stone mosaic are designed like textiles that ensconce the room for maximum comfort for all times of year. Colours of the custom stitching, powder-coated lamps, and tartan mosaic recall the adjacent building façade – original buff brick, original clay brick, and new green slate. The main, public level was designed to expand and contract with the seasons and hotel events. The entire experience is punctuated by four bars that are also convertible depending on the time of day, time of week, and time of year.
SUSTAINABILITY
The Royal repurposes a derelict but heritage protected 19th C. Victorian Mercantile building through a process of surgical restoration and state-of-the-art upgrades in building envelope to exponentially improve the structure’s energy efficiency. The project breathes new life into the vintage structure and allows new interior interventions to work with building environmental systems to increase R-value and fresh air exchange. New windows are custom designed to emulate the original windows but now with high-performance glazing and seals.