Concrete and glass of a contemporary art hotel standing in open landscape

Section

Art Hotels 6 hotels

What is in here

Two blocks per hotel: how the building lets the outside in, and how it keeps the outside out.

Six hotels where the building was designed as a piece of architecture first. We look at how each one lets the outside in and how it shuts the outside out. What does not belong here: interiors decorated with art but housed in an ordinary block, and buildings whose only claim is a collection on the walls.

01 · Canyon Point, Utah, USA

Amangiri

The desert hotel that wraps concrete around a rock outcrop and turns its glass toward one courtyard

How it opens

Inside the ring the building is almost entirely glass. Living areas face a courtyard built around a rock outcrop, so the stone stands in the middle of the plan rather than beyond it. Terraces carry the floor level out into the desert, and long openings hold the mesas as fixed views rather than as scenery.

How it shuts

From the approach the same building reads as blank concrete. The outer walls carry very few openings, and the colour of the mix follows the surrounding rock, so the volume settles into the ground instead of announcing itself. Corridors run behind those walls, and the desert enters only where the plan allows it.

What that makes it

The result is a building with two faces: shut toward the road and open toward a single interior point. A guest reads the desert through frames the architects fixed, not through the whole horizon at once.

One breath

01

Concrete walls of Amangiri standing against desert rock at Canyon Point, Utah

The practical bitThe site lies well outside town, so plan both the drive in and the drive back in daylight.

Sources dated · August 2026

02 · Valldal, Norway

Juvet Landscape Hotel

Small timber cabins in a river gorge, each one turning a single glass wall toward the trees

How it opens

Each cabin gives one whole wall to glass, and that wall faces the birch wood and the water below. Because the cabins stand apart on the slope, the view belongs to one room and is not shared along a corridor. Ground is left as it was found, so trees come close to the sills.

How it shuts

The remaining three walls are solid timber with no openings at all. A cabin therefore has one direction and three blind sides, which is what keeps neighbours out of each other's rooms on a tight, wooded slope. There is no shared frontage, no long window line, and nothing that faces the access track.

What that makes it

What comes out of this is a room with a single direction. The landscape is not surrounding you; it has been placed in front of you once, and the rest of the cabin turns its back on everything else.

One breath

02

Timber cabin of Juvet Landscape Hotel among birch trees above a river in Valldal, Norway

The practical bitThe road up the valley is narrow and mountain weather changes fast, so allow more time than the map suggests.

Sources dated · August 2026

03 · Beijing, China

The Opposite House

A green glass box by Kengo Kuma in Sanlitun, hollowed out around one very tall atrium

How it opens

Daylight enters through the green glass skin, and the atrium carries it down through the whole height of the building. The ground level meets the district directly, so the hotel behaves like part of the street rather than a compound set back from it. From inside, the city stays visible as colour and movement through the glazing.

How it shuts

The glass is tinted and layered, so the box is far less transparent from outside than the word glass suggests. Guest floors look inward across the atrium void rather than outward at the traffic, and the plan puts circulation on the perimeter. The building publishes light while keeping its rooms out of public sight.

What that makes it

This gives a hotel whose openness runs vertically. The outside world is admitted as daylight and as a silhouette, while the actual social space of the building is the shaft in the middle of it.

One breath

03

Green glass facade of The Opposite House in the Sanlitun district of Beijing

The practical bitIt sits in a busy shopping district, so arriving by car in the evening takes longer than the distance implies.

Sources dated · August 2026

04 · Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Hotel Fasano Rio de Janeiro

A beachfront building with Philippe Starck interiors, opened at roof level toward Ipanema and the headlands

How it opens

The building faces the beach across a single road, and the roof is given over to a pool deck with the water, the sand and the headlands in front of it. Rooms on the seaward side open to balconies, so the sound of the surf reaches the plan. Ground-floor rooms connect to the promenade.

How it shuts

Behind the seaward face the building is a dense city block, with service and back rooms working against the neighbouring walls. The street elevation is disciplined and largely closed at eye level, and the interiors are deliberately dim and enclosed, which sets them against the light outside. Only one direction is really opened.

What that makes it

The outcome is a building organised around one axis. Everything worth opening points at the water, and everything else is packed behind it, which is a normal answer to a beachfront site in a dense city.

One breath

04

Balconies of Hotel Fasano Rio de Janeiro facing the beach at Ipanema

The practical bitIpanema is busy year round, and the beach road is loud, so ask about the aspect of the room when you book.

Sources dated · August 2026

05 · Berlin, Germany

Das Stue

A 1930s Danish embassy at the Tiergarten, kept severe in stone and extended in glass toward the park

How it opens

A glass extension runs along the garden side and looks straight into the Tiergarten and the zoo enclosures beyond it. That wing is low, transparent and horizontal, and it puts the park at floor level for anyone inside. Trees stand close enough that the green of the park becomes the wall of the room.

How it shuts

On the street the original embassy stands as it was designed: symmetrical stone, small punched windows, a raised entrance and a formal courtyard that holds visitors at a distance. This half of the building was built to control who came in and it still reads that way, with heavy masonry and deep reveals.

What that makes it

Two periods of building therefore do two different jobs. The 1930s block keeps the city out and gives the address its weight, while the newer wing opens the same building to a park that no one owns.

One breath

05

Stone facade of Das Stue, the former Danish embassy building in Berlin

The practical bitThe park entrances close off some walking routes after dark, so check the way back before setting out on foot.

Sources dated · August 2026

06 · Tudela, Navarra, Spain

Hotel Aire de Bardenas

Low white volumes in farmland at the edge of the Bardenas, framing the plain through square openings

How it opens

Windows are cut as large squares that take one piece of the plain each, so the flat horizon arrives edited rather than panoramic. Rooms sit at ground level with direct doors outside, and the gaps between the volumes let the fields run right up to the buildings without fence or terrace.

How it shuts

The wind here is constant, so the courtyards are enclosed by screens and boxes of stacked crates that block it. Walls facing the weather carry almost nothing. The whole scheme is low, spread out and turned away from the prevailing side, which is how the outdoor rooms stay usable in an exposed place.

What that makes it

What this produces is shelter without walls in the usual sense. The building is not defending itself from a view but from moving air, and the openness it keeps is aimed carefully in the quiet direction.

One breath

06

White low volumes of Hotel Aire de Bardenas in fields near the Bardenas Reales, Navarra

The practical bitIt stands among working fields some way from Tudela, so a car and an offline map are worth arranging first.

Sources dated · August 2026

Open and closed are two ways of describing architecture, not two grades. We take what published sources state about a building and put it in our own words; the month at the foot of an entry is when we last read those sources through.

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