Located in New Acton, a diverse new precinct in Canberra, Nishi Commercial is a major development housing government departments, private offices, a cinema and cafés.

Nishi Residential is a multi-storey apartment building housing 2 floors of hotel rooms wrapped around a central courtyard and light well.

The ground floor contains Hotel Hotel’s lobby, reception, concierge and bar, as well as retail and hospitality tenancies. March Studio was engaged to create all the spaces on the ground floor of the boutique hotel, which encouraged residents, guests and visitors to linger in what would otherwise be known as transient space.

The walls in the hotel lobby, including the seating, the benches and the counters are an attempt to bring the handmade into the rigorous, polished building around it. Materials - custom gluelam timber, precast concrete beams - are allowed to sit, unadorned, overlapping and stacked in a simple manner, their joints overrunning and poking out. The singular system - the same for both materials - is stretched where needed, opened where useful and broken where forced.