Eighteen hotels
Buildings that let the outside in.
Buildings that keep it out.
Every hotel gets one orange block, one blue block and one framed conclusion. Nothing is scored.
Eighteen hotels in four sections, looked at through a single question: what does the building admit from around it, and what does it hold off? Glass walls and roofless courtyards on one side, windowless berths and metre-thick snow on the other.
A building is open where it brings the outside into the plan: a courtyard with no roof, a wall given entirely to glass, a terrace at floor level, an atrium that carries daylight down through every storey, a shoreline that guests walk along. Openness here is a decision an architect made, not a quality we are praising.
A building is closed where it holds the outside off: blank concrete on the approach, a sleeping berth with no window, a hall too deep for daylight to reach, a shell of compacted snow that cannot carry an opening. Closure is often the whole purpose of the type, so it is described the same way and with the same weight.
The eighteen
- 01AmangiriConcrete ring built around a desert outcrop
- 02Juvet Landscape HotelSeparate cabins, one glass wall facing the river
- 03The Opposite HouseGreen glass box around a tall inner atrium
- 04Hotel Fasano Rio de JaneiroIpanema in front, an open roof above
- 05Das StueEmbassy stone in front, glass toward the park
- 06Hotel Aire de BardenasWhite cubes in fields, wind held off
- 07CoDE Pod HostelWindowless pods inside Old Town stone rooms
- 08Capsule Hotel Astil DojimaTwo tiers of capsules, one shared bath
- 09SnoozecubeSealed cabins standing inside a transit hall
- 10The Pocket Hotel Kyoto Shijo KarasumaCompact berths in the middle of Kyoto
- 11Montreal Casino & HotelExpo 67 pavilions on a river island
- 12Fallsview Casino ResortBuilt on the escarpment above the falls
- 13River Rock Casino ResortWaterfront resort with its own marina
- 14Casino Rama ResortLakeside resort on Chippewas of Rama land
- 15IcehotelRebuilt each winter from Torne river ice
- 16Hôtel de GlaceNorth America's ice building, winter season only
- 17Kirkenes SnowhotelSnow rooms beside a northern Norwegian fjord
- 18Iglu-DorfSnow domes built high above the valley
A list of facilities tells you what a hotel has bought. This pair tells you what the building decided. A capsule with no window and a cabin with one glass wall are answers to the same question, and reading them side by side explains more than any count of features could. It also travels: the pair works in a desert, an airport and a snowfield alike.