Death comes even to the best of us.
Very sorry to see this loss.
Three days back, London.
I recall the first time that I’d booked some clients at the [Hotel #1] ACE, Seattle. And I fretted about what they’d think [they were older clients, linked to an American power brand]. Low beds, white glossy rooms, a kind of utilitarian approach to hospitality, speckled with Shepard Fairey art.
Would they be…okay?
They loved the unexpected solution,
so I thought it would work —
and it did.
From there, at our NYC office, we were just down the street from the NYC ACE on 29th Street —
we booked in other relationships.
Stayed there, put clients there, ate with friends there.
On another run, working Palm Desert, Dawn Clark and I
checked into ACE | Palm Springs — and it, like NYC,
was a youthful and technically-tethered, art-spellbound crowd.
We wrote about the “martial-inspired” design — army utilitarian,
a kind of stenciled bullet-proof approach to simple and direct messaging.
What I found fascinating about Alex was his “collector’s mind” — gathering teams: art, foods and restaurants, signing and graphics into a collective whole, to render gallery-like experiences of understated simplicity,
layered with authentic finishes and time-worn textural expressions.
Touch, human touch, care was evident in everything he did, from his early Rudy’s Barbershop days [one haircut for me] to the array of his “art projects” which is how he thought of his hospitality offerings.
Beauty and understatement — a kind of quiet,
“here we are, take is as it is.”
As a contributor to the Seattle design scene,
Alex was a foundational original.
And, to the truth of the originality,
his captivation with the well-used,
accessible and honest statements
of design should never be underestimated.
I might suggest that he’s influenced a generation.
We all come, and go — his journey shall remain
unforgettable in my mind.
ACE Palm Springs {photo: Dawn A. Clark}
Like the draw of the ace card —
it’s high, and low, it’s a play in multiplicity —
one thing, one game, another meaning, another game.
So sad, so young, story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/nyregion/alex-calderwood-creator-and-face-of-the-unconventional-ace-hotel-chain-dies-at-47.html
The journey just doesn’t stop.
It keeps on going.
You are here, then
you are gone:
[Door mat, ACE NYC]
TIM | Pike Place Offices
….
THE STRATEGY OF RE-IMAGINING
HOSPITALITY & GUEST ENGAGEMENT
DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR UNFORGETTABLE PLACES:
HOTELS |RESORTS | SPAS | RETAIL | RESTAURANTS |
SPAS + WELL CENTERS
Happiness experience design, storytelling + brand = http://bit.ly/17cakbT