The distinctive brutalist Armstrong Rubber Company Building, designed by Marcel Breuer in 1968, is inhabited again as the Hotel Marcel, after 20 years of disuse. Its two stacked volumes now gather 165 hotel rooms and a conference center, while pioneering sustainability strategies that squarely address our urgent climate crisis.

Comprehensive interventions adapt the building to its new purpose and maximize its energy efficiency. The design team operated within the thickness of the walls and the breadth of the floorplates to provide welcoming guestrooms and ensure that the hotel limits its energy consumption. As the first Passive House hotel in the US, the project sets out to demonstrate how hotels can operate with a minimal carbon footprint.

In its reincarnation, the building captures solar energy and distributes more daylight to the center of the floorplates. Below hundreds photovoltaic panels on the roof, two glazed-in courtyards flood the conference center in natural light. Daylight penetrates further into the building thanks to two square lightwells that extend down from the courtyards.

The concrete perimeter walls were carefully treated from the interior to create a high-performance envelope. The windows were replaced with triple-pane replicas that ensure an optimal acoustical and thermal barrier. Breuer’s sculptural pre-cast ‘Mosai’ panels are air-sealed and coated with spray insulation while tight corners are lined with nanogel blanket.

This hotel looks to the future and celebrates its past. As floors were converted, new partitions comply with the original 5-foot grid and the uninterrupted 185-foot expanse at the ground floor that connects the reception, lounge, and restaurant celebrates the structural ingenuity of this building. The formerly windowless 9th mechanical floor is transformed to entertain events and conferences presenting guests with the 16 foot high structural trusses which Breuer had only expressed in the north and south precast facades.