Method

Open and closed

Why this pair

Most hotel writing lists what a place has. We were more interested in what a building decides, and almost every decision worth describing turns out to sit on one line: how much of the outside is allowed in, and how much is held off.

The pair also travels. A concrete house in a desert, a berth in an airport hall and a dome of packed snow have nothing else in common, but each of them answers the same question, and the answers can be read next to each other.

What goes in HOW IT OPENS

Glass walls, roofless courtyards, terraces at floor level, arcades, atriums that carry daylight down, doors straight onto a street or a shore, views that the plan has been arranged around. Anything by which the surroundings enter the building.

Where a building has no openings at all, this block describes what the site does instead: a bath everyone shares, a lit concourse, a snow terrace between the domes.

What goes in HOW IT SHUTS

Blank walls, deep plans that daylight cannot reach, berths without windows, thick snow and ice, halls entered from a car park instead of a pavement, buildings turned inward toward a courtyard.

The two blocks are not an argument. They are two halves of one description, and neither of them repeats the other.

It is not a scale

There is no score here, no percentage and no ranking. A closed building is not a worse building. A capsule is closed because that is what a capsule is for; a wall of ice cannot carry a window without failing; a former embassy was designed to control who came through the door.

For that reason you will not find comparative words in these entries. We describe the two conditions and leave the reader to decide which suits the trip.

What that makes it

The third block draws the two together and says what kind of building comes out of the combination. It is written as a statement of fact, without praise and without complaint, and it is the shortest of the three on purpose.

The practical bit

One line per hotel, written as preparation rather than as criticism. A steep slope, a short season, a narrow mountain road, a berth reached by ladder: these are things worth arranging before you travel, not faults in a working business.

Sources dated

The month at the foot of an entry records when we last read our sources through. Buildings are altered, operators change and names change with them, so the date tells you how old our reading is.

Where the material comes from

Published sources: hotel and operator websites, architectural publications and press material about the buildings. We put what those sources state into our own words.

We do not publish stay reports and we do not claim to have slept in these places. The guide is written by two architecture editors and a proofreader, working by correspondence since 2019, with no office.

What is not published here

No prices, no stars, no ratings, no room counts, no opening hours or schedules, no booking, no affiliate links and no paid placement. A hotel cannot buy a mention here and cannot buy a change to one.

Why an international guide has Casino Hotels

Four large Canadian resorts belong to the subject because of what they are as buildings: pavilions from a world exposition, a block cut into an escarpment above a gorge, a waterfront property with a marina, a low resort on lake country land.

The gaming floor is not described and not assessed. Where the closed side of one of those buildings is discussed, it is about depth of plan, absence of windows and inward orientation — about architecture, and nothing else.

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.