Hotel Il Pellicano
Porto Ercole, Tuscany, Italy
Il Pellicano sits low on the rocks of the Monte Argentario peninsula, where the land drops into the Tyrrhenian in a series of terraces rather than a single cliff. The hotel was built in the mid-1960s and has been photographed almost continuously since, which has given it an unusual second life: the pictures taken here over sixty years now function as a house archive, and framed prints from it hang throughout the public rooms.
The interiors lean on Tuscan materials — terracotta, dark timber, printed cottons — arranged with far less formality than the setting might suggest. Rooms and suites are spread across the main house and a scattering of low garden buildings, so arrival involves walking through olive and cypress rather than down a corridor. A saltwater pool is cut into the rock above the sea, and a lift and stair descend to bathing platforms below.
The NoMad London
London, United Kingdom
The NoMad London occupies the former Bow Street Magistrates' Court and police station, directly opposite the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. The conversion kept the Victorian shell and much of its interior geometry, then filled it with a dense, deliberately layered decorative scheme: patterned fabrics, deep colour, antique furniture and a great deal of framed art hung close together in the manner of a private house rather than a gallery.
The centrepiece is a glass-roofed atrium restaurant set in what was the courtyard, three storeys high and planted heavily enough to read as a conservatory. Guest rooms vary considerably because the original building was never laid out for accommodation — some look onto the opera house, others into the atrium, and a few occupy the old cell block's footprint. A bar sits below ground in the former holding area.
Ace Hotel Kyoto
Kyoto, Japan
Ace Hotel Kyoto is built around Shin-Puh-Kan, a 1926 telephone exchange by the architect Tetsuro Yoshida, with a new wing added behind it. The renovation was led by Kengo Kuma with the Los Angeles studio Commune, and the join between the two halves is left visible rather than smoothed over: brick and arched windows on one side, timber lattice and concrete on the other, meeting across a planted central courtyard.
Inside, the commissioning went broad — ceramics, textiles, woodwork and music-related pieces by Kyoto makers appear in rooms and corridors rather than being concentrated in a lobby display. Guest rooms are large by central Kyoto standards, with washi-filtered light, custom furniture and, in many cases, a record player. The ground floor stays open to the street, with shops and cafés under the old arcade.