Commune’s Ace Hotel DTLA: A Study in Los Angeles Craft and Adaptive Reuse
Commune’s 2014 design for Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles brought guest rooms and gathering spaces to a former office tower beside the United Artists theatre. The hotel opened that January, joining a highly decorative historic setting with interiors shaped by local makers and the practical demands of a compact building.
Ace operated the hotel until January 2024. The Los Angeles Conservancy records the subsequent names STILE Downtown Los Angeles by Kasa and The United Theater on Broadway. The original Commune interiors belong to an earlier chapter, when the conversion connected the building’s architectural history with contemporary Los Angeles craft. [1] [2] [3]
Working with an inherited contrast
The project paired a highly decorative historic exterior with the stripped-back structure revealed inside the office tower. In his retrospective for Commune, Roman Alonso describes how the existing windows and compact room dimensions directed the design towards an efficient modernist approach. The conversion’s physical limits became part of its architectural character.
The studio identified Rudolf Schindler’s work as a reference for the guestrooms, alongside broader influences from 1920s Hollywood and Los Angeles punk culture. These sources did not require the building to be reduced to a single historical period. They allowed the new interior to acknowledge several strands of the city’s identity while dealing with the practical conditions of conversion. [1] [2]
Local production as part of the design
Commune’s official project description states that custom furnishings were produced in California and Mexico, and that local artists and makers contributed to the interior. The ambition to make the hotel specific to Los Angeles was therefore expressed through production as well as through imagery.
Production gave the project a connection to its setting that extended beyond imagery. Furniture, lighting and architectural details carried the work of a creative community into the finished rooms. The hotel’s Los Angeles identity emerged through these relationships, as well as through the historical and cultural references within the scheme. [1]
A room assembled through many hands
Alonso’s retrospective names a wide network of contributors. Among them were Tanya Aguiñiga, who made textile works; Alma Allen, who produced furniture and bronze handles; Judson Studios, responsible for stained glass; and Atelier de Troupe, which supplied interior lighting. The account also identifies the Haas Brothers’ work at reception.
These contributions introduce different scales of attention. Some are encountered as substantial objects; others are registered through touch or as part of the light in a room. Their collective importance lies in how they give a commercially operated building the specificity of an authored place. The hotel’s identity was distributed across many individual acts of making. [2]
An interior within a longer building history
The Los Angeles Conservancy recognised the project with a Preservation Award in 2014. The conversion gave the office tower a new programme alongside the theatre, creating spaces for visitors to stay and gather within an existing urban landmark.
Commune’s contribution can be traced across several scales: the adaptation of the rooms, the furniture made for them and the smaller objects encountered through touch and light. The building supplied strong architectural conditions; its contributors gave those conditions a particular material life. Their work remains part of the history of the place, even as its uses and operators continue to change. [3]
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