Paradox Hotel Vancouver

A Tower That Turns as It Climbs

West Georgia Street is the spine of downtown Vancouver, and the tower at number 1161 is the one visitors stop to photograph without knowing why. Arthur Erickson drew it, with Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership and DYS Architecture, as a triangular shaft that rotates steadily on its own axis, forty five degrees between the pavement and the top of its sixty storeys. The effect from the street is of a building caught mid movement. The hotel occupies the first fifteen floors, apartments fill the rest, and the geometry means no two rooms repeat exactly.

Why It Works

We keep this one because it is a genuine independent in a downtown owned by international brands, and it has the ratings to hold its own against them, including a Forbes Travel Guide Four Star. The ground floor is the other half of the case. Mott 32 is a serious kitchen with an international following, not a hotel restaurant with a borrowed name, and Xylia Natural Spa gives the building the wellness side that towers of this type usually skip. Add Erickson’s architecture and there is more to look at here than the view.

Why This Location

This stretch of West Georgia is the shortest distance to most of what a first visit to Vancouver involves. Coal Harbour and the seawall are three blocks north, and Stanley Park continues from there without a road crossing. Robson Street and its shops run parallel one block south, the Vancouver Art Gallery sits at the far end of it, and the SeaBus and the Canada Line to the airport are both walkable. For a city where the good parts are spread along the water, starting from here saves an hour a day.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxe

• Vibe: Architectural, sleek, late night capable, independent

• Rooms: 147 rooms and suites across the tower’s first fifteen floors, each shaped by the building’s rotation

• Best For: Design and architecture travellers, city stays that want a real restaurant downstairs, couples who like a late bar

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The way the floor plan shifts as the tower turns, so the windows frame a different slice of the city on every level

• Dining: Mott 32 Vancouver, a Chinese brasserie with downtown views, plus Karma Lounge for drinks and Mansion for the later hours

• Amenities: Xylia Natural Spa, pool area, fitness room, event and meeting spaces, pets accepted

• Attractions: Coal Harbour and the seawall three blocks north, Stanley Park beyond it, Robson Street one block south, the Vancouver Art Gallery at the end of it

Fifteen Floors, No Two the Same

Because the tower rotates, the floor plate arrives at a slightly different angle on every level, which is why the rooms vary in shape rather than simply in size. Corner rooms are the ones to ask for, since the turn gives them windows on two aspects and a view that reaches either toward the harbour and the North Shore mountains or back across the downtown grid. Suites add sitting space and better bathrooms. The finish throughout is dark, contemporary and deliberately quiet, letting the geometry and the glass do the talking.

Mott 32 on the Ground Floor

Mott 32 came to Vancouver with a reputation already made, and it cooks Chinese food with the polish of a brasserie and the pace of a diner, which is its own description and an accurate one. Barbecued meats and dim sum are the anchors, the room is dressed for an evening out, and the windows give onto the street rather than into a lobby. Karma Lounge next door does the drinking, and Mansion, downstairs, keeps going long after both of them have closed.

Xylia, the Spa Most Guests Miss

The spa is not advertised in the lobby and is easy to walk past, which is a pity because it is the part of the hotel that most changes a stay. Xylia Natural Spa works with natural products and long form rituals rather than a menu of twenty minute treatments, and the pool area sits alongside it. Book before arrival rather than on the day: a hotel of this size does not run a large treatment floor, and the good slots go early.