A 1926 telephone exchange building in Kyoto's Nakagyo ward — its warm amber brick facade, arched windows, and herringbone-patterned brickwork belonging unmistakably to the Taisho-era Western influence that shaped so much of Japan's early modern institutional architecture — provided the structural and cultural anchor for Ace Hotel Kyoto when it opened in 2020. Kengo Kuma's office handled the architecture, threading a new ten-floor tower clad in dark bronze louvres behind the preserved original building, the two structures in deliberate conversation rather than seamless merger. The contrast visible from the street is the point: old brick meeting angular contemporary metalwork, neither apologizing for the other. Commune Design, the Los Angeles studio behind several Ace properties, furnished the 213 rooms in a palette that moves confidently between mid-century warmth and graphic boldness — low-slung platform beds dressed in striped wool blankets, patterned curtains in amber and ochre, hanging textile prints that carry the flat graphic energy of folk art. The restaurant unfolds behind double-height steel-framed glazing overlooking a garden, its hexagonal slate floor tiles and Eero Saarinen-style upholstered chairs in teal and cow-print fabric giving the dining room an assured eclecticism. At the bar, rippled copper cladding wraps the back wall in warm amber reflection, stacked globe pendants flanking a deep timber counter — a room that draws equally on Kyoto craft tradition and the downtown cool Ace has long made its register.

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