gotoplays / Art Hotels

Art Hotels

Three hotels whose architecture, interiors and commissioned craft are treated as the point of the stay rather than a decorative afterthought.

3 entries

Entry 01 of 03

COMO Laucala Island

Laucala Island, Fiji

Laucala sits off Fiji's northern coast, and reaching it is part of the arithmetic of going: a flight, then a smaller flight, then a short transfer. The island is privately held and run as a single resort, so the guest count stays low against a very large piece of land.

Craft is what places this hotel in an art category. Villas are built in a vernacular idiom — steep thatched roofs, timber framing, woven wall panels, stonework laid by hand — with local materials and local makers doing the work. Each villa stands on its own ground rather than in a row, and the detailing changes depending on whether it faces beach, cliff or plantation.

Beyond the villas there is a working farm and coconut plantation that supplies the kitchens, a golf course cut into the interior, and a stretch of reef offshore. The resort reads less like a hotel campus and more like a small settlement that happens to take guests.

Private island Villa accommodation Fijian craft Northern Fiji

Entry 02 of 03

Amanoi

Ninh Thuận Province, Vietnam

Architecture carries this one. Amanoi occupies high ground inside Núi Chúa National Park, above Vinh Hy Bay on Vietnam's south-central coast, and the buildings borrow their proportions from traditional Vietnamese pavilions — pitched roofs, deep eaves, dark timber, generous openings on every side.

The plan is dispersed. Pavilions and villas are set along the ridge and down toward the water, linked by paths rather than corridors, so moving through the property means moving outdoors. A central pavilion sits over a lake; the spa occupies its own quieter pocket of the site.

The surrounding park is dry forest rather than jungle, which gives the landscape an unusual sparseness for Vietnam — pale rock, low scrub, and the bay below holding a colour that changes through the day. Very little here competes with the view, which appears to have been the intention.

Núi Chúa National Park Vinh Hy Bay Pavilion architecture Cliff setting

Entry 03 of 03

One&Only Palmilla

Los Cabos, Mexico

Palmilla began in the 1950s, when the southern tip of Baja was still remote and reached mostly by small plane. That origin is still legible in the buildings: whitewashed walls, red tile roofs, arcaded walkways and a bell tower, laid out in a hacienda idiom rather than a resort-tower one.

A small chapel stands on the rise above the main building and has become the property's signature image. Gardens step down from there toward the Sea of Cortez, planted heavily enough that individual rooms stay screened from one another.

Successive renovations have modernised the interiors without flattening the original architecture, which is the harder outcome and the reason the property belongs on a design list. Dining, pools and beach access sit below the historic core, so the old buildings remain the thing you walk through rather than a preserved corner you visit once.

Hacienda architecture Sea of Cortez Hilltop chapel 1950s origin