The Canada Hotel

rchitects: Hayball
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Developer: Plough & Harrow C/o Mider Developments
Principal Contractor: Galvin Construction
Principal Engineer: Wallbridge & Gilbert
Specialist Concrete Subcontractor: Westkon
Photography: Rob Stent, John Gollings, Tony Miller

Function and Performance
The Canada Hotel redevelopment is a student accommodation project that provides 219 one bedroom apartments on the site of the historic Canada Hotel. A new 13 level tower stands over the reinvigorated hotel, its distinctive form and language acknowledging the historic building as ancestor.
The entry to the building is marked by a dark fissure that is seemingly carved between the new and existing structures. An undulating, blackened ceiling completes the cave-like experience and escorts entrants to the reception and lift lobby.

Aesthetics
The project continues the evolution of the inner-Melbourne’s ‘Pelham Precinct’ with a robust architectural language that relates to neighbouring projects. The striking façade, comprised of stacked geometric panels that spiral up and around the building, uses its carefully cut openings to de-scale an otherwise monumental building and establishes a lively rhythm with light and shade, solid and void.
Comment on the diverse local context is found in a Liquorice Allsorts motif that is introduced externally as coloured balcony reveals and continued in the lift interior, laundry ceiling and stair nosings.