Music: nhow, Berlin
When this hotel opened on the banks of the Spree in 2010 the repurposing of an old storehouse into an innovative hotel seemed complete. But it was hardly a new concept. What gave it cut-through was music, in the form of two professional studios available to musicians seeking an environment outside the usual digs and other guests. It's run in partnership with the Swiss-based Lautstark Music and René Rennefeld, who also manages Berlin's legendary Hansa Studios where the likes of U2, Nick Cave and the late David Bowie recorded.
Music strikes a chord the moment you step into the lobby, past the static pink N of the NH Hotel Group at the entrance. It's like landing in a musical, alien future. Evidence of its musical mission is startlingly obvious from the array of guitars, amps and other recording equipment. Divert your eyes past psycho-groovy pop artworks, the pink carpet and the performance stage across to the check-in desks set inside almost Jetson-style pods and all becomes obvious.
In characteristic Berlin style, the hotel disregards convention. Whimsical bubblegum pink hues pervade the 304 bedrooms, blancmange white lounges sit playfully on the riverside terrace, even the hallway carpet art seems cunningly designed to play with your mind, especially after working your way through the rock'n'roll menu in Fabrics, the in-house restaurant. Even the lifts get in on the act, featuring music from Mozart to AC/DC. If you feel the urge to bang out a little New Killer Star then the concierge will deliver an electric guitar to your fantastically shiny, buzzy room – choose the river side as you get 180-degree views.
This is design, art and music all rolled into one, close to clubs and music venues in Berlin's Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg districts. The centrepiece of the hotel's creative floor is the Analog Mixing Suite with state-of-the-art sound recording technology. Talk about being amped up.
Art: La Colombe d'Or, Provence, France
For some this fabled Provençal hotel, the Golden Dove, is alone worth the journey to the south of France. Defined by its location and history – and since the early 1940s by art – it's been in the Roux family since it opened as a simple cafe in 1920. And it has a story to tell. The story is about art: it hangs on the walls and is scattered about the gardens and explains why booking a room is tough. It's a riot of Matisse, Chagall, Léger and Braque painted haphazardly on the walls of the external spaces, in the white-washed, wood-panelled dining room and sunny bedrooms, and as ceramic and mobile pieces on the dining terrace. The story goes that many works were produced in lieu of payment for lodgings. There's a photograph of a brooding Picasso in the dining room. He was said to be reluctant to offer a piece but eventually handed over his interpretation of a flower vase that sits unmarked in a gilded frame, almost casually above a small dining table.
The 25-room hotel began life as a small café and soon after had three rooms added for accommodation. In those days guests danced on the leafy terrace, drank pastis and Provençal rosé and ate plump winter woodcock from the hills. Then World War II broke out. Parisian artists and writers flocked to the limestone hills of Provence as it was a "free zone". There, an hour north-west of Nice, close to the ancient hilltop town of Saint-Paul de Vence, they discovered this hotel with its chunky facade built of stone from a derelict castle in Aix-En-Provence. After the war the new guest list included such luminaries as the dashing Yves Montand and actress Simone Signoret. They married in the Saint-Paul de Vence town hall in 1951 and had their reception on the terrace of the hotel, where they had met. Actors Lino Ventura and Serge Reggiani were also regulars.
In the years since, the art collection has grown. The latest work installed is a bold ceramic by the Irish artist Sean Scully, which is set in the swimming pool area. This is a hotel for hiding in, artistic inclinations competing with clouds of linen in the rooms, chilled Côte de Provence beneath lemon trees on the terraces and plates of la sole grillée dijonnaise.
Literary: Corinthia, London
The word penthouse has a distinctly un-British feel to it; suite sounds more elegant. Even super-suite at a stretch but if you want to lure super-money then penthouse it is. And the London hotel penthouse world is particularly cutthroat. This world works a treat for the odd gas baron with accompanying family or for Hollywood superstars: Johnny Depp for example, who will pay handsomely for a night in the Writer's Penthouse in this meticulously renovated, Victorian-era hotel. Close to the river, the Corinthia was, from 1936, offices for the Ministry of Defence; prior to that it was the Metropole, a sparkling hotel for society gals and chaps.
So, writers, if you want to lock yourself away up in a dusty garret to sweat over your magnum opus, then this writer's hideaway ain't for you, unless you can drop $20,000 a night. Oddly enough there is a turret here, accessed by lift. We're talking about a penthouse for writers who have made enough cash to afford 168 greedy square metres over two floors comprising king bed, deep wool carpet, silk throws, bevelled mirror and marble plushness plus a thousand tomes on floor-to-ceiling shelving and a walnut reading desk on which to peruse them.
GA Design International, which oversaw the reworking of the other six penthouses – the Musician's, the Actor's, the Explorer's, the Royal, the Hamilton and the Whitehall – may not have employed focus groups to see if a working writer would gravitate towards this style but what can be deduced (it's hard not to come on all Conan Doyle) is that if you believe your opus would benefit from shelling out your (imaginary) advance, then this literary sanctuary with its own small balcony is for you.
Architecture and design: Park Hyatt, Tokyo
The legendary architect Kenzo Tange, of Tokyo-based Tange Associates, wanted a sense of spaciousness and calm on the top 14 floors of this 52-storey, three-element skyscraper that makes up the Shinjuku Park Tower. Achieving pared-back harmony in one of the world's busiest cityscapes was for this Pritzker-winning architect a project that helped cement his place in architectural history. Tange had overseen the reconstruction of postwar Hiroshima and died in 2005.
He sought a foil to the frenetic, neon-lit Shinjuku ward bustle: Tokyo does busy like no other city. Views to Mount Fuji helped as did interior designer John Morford. Offices and retail occupy the 39 floors below the hotel and hum with yen-churning corporate energy. But step into the bamboo garden lobby on floor 41, into a world of mahogany, steel and granite full of armoires and wending pathways between spaces, and Yoshitaka Echizenya paintings in the 177 rooms, and maybe you've seen it before. Bill Murray sits forlornly in the New York Grill and Bar on the 52nd floor with its 360-degree panorama and open kitchen, sharing a crisis with Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation (the requisite mention when it comes to this hotel). Most of the interior scenes were set in the hotel and Morford was, it's said, none too happy that his interiors were clichéd up. "Japanesque," he called it.
That said, for students of architecture and design, the Park Hyatt is a must-see Tokyo building. The city's forest of skyscrapers was a theme of Tange's vision, with shelter below on the shady "forest floor" offering respite, especially to the office workers who pour out of the building at lunchtime. It may sound trite but it is most certainly the detail that is the difference between luxury and premium luxury. Try this: the wall panelling in the rooms is from reclaimed elms from Hokkaido in northern Japan that have been submerged in lakes for 2000 years. A hotel for things lost and found, then.
High tech: Four Seasons, Silicon Valley
Remember when something stupendous happened in social networking circles? Something that had implications for 6 billion tiny actions a day? In 2014 the inner sanctum of Facebook was brainstorming in a boardroom in this serendipitously located hotel in East Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, just out of San Francisco. Led by Chris Cox, Facebook's then chief product officer, the group decided they needed something more than the "like" button. A dislike button was too negative; so an alternative was conceived. Cox hurried the 10 minutes back to Facebook HQ at Menlo Park with the idea. A week later Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg gave it a big like. "Reactions" was born.
Tech history was made in this gleaming hotel. If you want to immerse yourself in a tech-heavy environment replete with tech luxury, proximity to start-up brains, right in the heart of the valley, then this 200-room, 10-storey, incredibly sharp, Hill Glazier-designed hotel is the absolute goods. It positively reeks of IQ and EQ – a Facebook favourite: the Emotion Quotient. The hotel may be virtually on top of the East Palo Alto freeway but if you can get one of the 27 suites near to the fourth floor pool, all will be quiet for eavesdropping. It's quite an oasis up here with gorgeous views over the valley to that powerhouse of tech academia, Stanford University, especially at sunset.
The hotel offers a brilliant tech tour which takes in Google in Mountain View and Facebook with its giant "like" thumb, as well as giving access to the Quad Engineering Tour at Stanford. Plus, you can take a look at Apple's new campus, under construction at Cupertino. Back at the in-house restaurant Quattro, the talk over Acquerello risotto might turn to how to personalise the news feed (just wait) and the future of clickable responses. Like with the top reaction button.
Follow AFR Mag on Twitter and Instagram
The AFR Magazine's annual Arts issue is out on Friday, February 24 inside The Australian Financial Review.
