From creating affordable housing to preserving cultural memory, the year’s best architecture harnesses the power of design to make a better — and more beautiful — world.

What defined the best architecture of 2022? As the year comes to an end, we add another chapter to an annual tradition of celebrating the highest achievements in design around the world. This year, our list includes an eclectic array of projects, reflecting a diversity of cultures, geographies and contexts: These are projects that expand the possibilities of what architecture can accomplish — and what it’s for.

From an affordable apartment complex in Los Angeles to an innovative long-term care home in Iceland and a cultural memory centre in Bangladesh, many of our picks are focused on community wellbeing, harnessing the power of design to foster social good. And while no unifying aesthetic or trend defines the best architecture of 2022, the projects all draw the eye and — in their own way — lift the heart.

• Ace Hotel, Toronto, Canada, by Shim-Sutcliffe Architects
• Rose Apartments, Los Angeles, USA, by Brooks Scarpa Architects
• Maison Owl, Ube, Japan, by Junya Ishigami
• National Centre for Art, Crafts and Design, Mindelo, Cabo Verde, by Ramos Castellano Arquitectos
• Móberg Nursing Home, Selfoss, Iceland, by LOOP Architects and Urban Arkitektar
• El Salitre Community Centre, Zapotlanejo, Mexico, by Omar Vergara Taller
• CIBC Square/Legacy Room, Toronto, Canada, by WilkinsonEyre, Brook McIlroy
• New Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, UK, by Níall McLaughlin Architects
• Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, by Rizvi Hassan
• Winter Park Library & Events Center, Winter Park, USA, by Adjaye Associates

In Toronto, where glass and steel condo towers reign supreme, the Ace Hotel is a stunning and welcome deviation from the norm. Local award-winning firm Shim-Sutcliffe Architects designed the first Canadian outpost of the popular brand (and one of its first ground-up new builds rather than retrofits) with a definitive nod to the city’s architectural heritage. Clad in ruddy precast brick, the building conjures the red-brick warehouses that once populated the city’s Garment District, the neighbourhood Ace now calls home. From there, the impressive moves continue to magnify.

An epically swooped Douglas fir-lined canopy frames the street entrance, which opens to a triple-height lobby anchored by a contingent of poured-in-place concrete arches edged in steel. Along with repeating the shape of the exterior, these arches also support the entire structure — with some help from gigantic exposed “knuckles” that connect to underground pillars and transfer the building’s load to the foundation walls. Suspended from steel bars, a floating oak-lined mezzanine bar occupies the centre of the soaring atrium and serves as a cap for the sunken restaurant below, itself appointed with a robust materiality of brick flooring, textural bush-hammered concrete walls and sophisticated copper accents. It’s a magnificent feat that, as Simon Lewsen put it in his Sept/Oct cover story on the project, is a “heroic design that flaunts its heroism.”

While the public spaces are commanding, the private guest suites with their locally sourced and crafted furnishings, Douglas fir accents and muted terracotta and indigo colour palettes have a subdued “Canadiana ruggedness” to them. With the Ace Hotel Toronto, Shim-Sutcliffe’s first hotel project to date, a new and intriguing character has been added to Toronto’s urban landscape, one that feels individually unique while also thoroughly Canadian.

Source: Azure