A combination of Ketley's Staffordshire Blue brick slips, solid bricks and specials helped to complete the transformation of a formerly dreary, blocky, business hotel, into the uber hip Ace Hotel in trendy Shoreditch. The designers, Universal Design Studio, have managed to plug this building back into its surroundings and at the same time have created a beacon of urban style. The clunking street façade has been broken up into a series of shopfronts more in scale with the ragged, mostly Victorian fabric of the Shoreditch streetscape, once a warren of cabinetry workshops and small retailers. The ground-floor walls have been clad in Ketley's staffs blue bricks and slips, which have been laid in complex patterns that appear almost to weave the façade back into the city.
