Renaissance Montreal Downtown

Lighting Evokes Art-Centric Design Theme in Redesigned Downtown Montreal Hotel

Prominently located in downtown Montreal, the Renaissance Montréal Centre-Ville is a big hotel with boutique character. Taking its cues from the city’s trendy urban culture and popular arts scene, the Renaissance features a variety of playful art-centric interiors, blending extravagant materials with rough textures, industrial finishings, and street art within its 120 rooms, 22 suites, and numerous dynamic public spaces.

Contracted by Marriott Renaissance to help redesign the hotel, Montreal-based design firm, CAMDI wanted to offer a different, more independent type of hotel experience that showcased the creativity of the city’s local artists. The resulting spaces reflect a mixed design aesthetic that combines stylish elegance with dramatic accents, particularly through the use of visually impressive lighting throughout the hotel.

CAMDI partnered with Bloom Lighting Group to create and integrate custom lighting fixtures in the Renaissance’s guest rooms, hallways, and lobby, as well as in their signature East Restaurant. The new luminaires shine in each of their respective locations, reflecting the overarching theme and elevating the intended design scheme.

“We have worked with Bloom in the past, and are continually impressed by their ability to customize any request,” said Karine Touzel, designer at CAMDI. “They are able to create and integrate the lighting with the essence of the project, in addition to being fast, affordable and very easy to work with.”

Within the hotel’s guest rooms, soothing lighting and neutral colours are juxtaposed with accented forms and eye-catching decorative elements. Bloom designed many custom luminaires within these rooms to match this artistic theme, as well as define the different functional spaces.

Bedside, hanging wooden whisk-shaped pendant lamps made of natural oak cast lined shadows down the wall and glow softly for gentle mood lighting, while adjustable polished-chrome headboard sconces provide more direct lighting to the bed area. Six-foot tall black standing floor lamps in matte black steel illuminate modern lounging chairs, while smaller, matching steel desktop lamps in white matte finish offer appropriate workspace lighting.

Guest rooms also include a pair of oversize statement lamps, one a six-and-a-half foot tall standing arc lamp in black steel with black fabric shade, and the other a giant steel standing floor lamp in red matte finish reminiscent of the drafting lamps so often seen in artist’s studios. Both luminaires pair well with the furniture’s mid-century modern aesthetic, drawing the eye and delivering soft lighting to the seating area.

In hallways, white powder-coated LED wall sconces in long, tubular shapes emit gentle lighting that reflects back against glossy wooden panels, illuminating the hallway in calming tones. In elevator lobbies, functional, yet decorative installations provide light through a series of black fabric half-shade sconces, while imitating art installations typical of the area’s many galleries. Floor-to-ceiling black pipes are at once organic and industrial, simulating both the vines of a tree and the tunnels of Montreal’s underground subway system.

Down in the lobby, the same oversize red matte steel drafting lamp overlooks the seating area adjacent to grey couches and a whimsical swing, while its twin in black matte steel finish stands dramatically next to the check-in desk.

Bloom’s most prominent custom luminaires are found in the Renaissance’s signature East Restaurant, whose Old Shanghai theme and Asian cuisine called for traditional, yet eye-catching statement lighting.

Above the bar hangs an 18-foot square grid of black steel tubes interspersed with round antique bulbs, illuminating both the bar below and the gilded Chinese shade pattern of the ceiling. Above the tables, large black wire pendants mirror the same black steel of adjacent decorative wall panels, while also evoking traditional Chinese forms.

Finally, in the center of the Restaurant, the pièce-de-résistance: four massive suspended, hand-cast steel Chinese bells, sourced directly by Bloom from a specialized factory in China after the restaurant’s owner requested the hard-to-find ornamental pieces. Tremendously large, the bells cast subdued lighting over the booths below.

“We weren’t sure that Bloom would be able to find the bells but they did,” said Touzel. “They look very impressive and we are very happy.”

Project
Renaissance Montreal Downtown
Location
Montreal, Quebec
Designer
Camdi Design, Montreal, Quebec
Year
2016

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