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We're the first in line to book hotels where the room design is as important as the quality of the mattresses. But in recent years we've discovered a lot of style and no substance: bare spaces, a dearth of right angles, rooms that hide all amenities from sight—these are not hotels, they're pods ready to be beamed up to the mothership. Design hotels went from clever and niche finds to generic commodities manufactured by W Hotels and their offspring. But there's a new generation of design hotels, one that rejects the notion that a slab of concrete is a place to sit. Whether they're reducing their environmental footprint, employing local artisans, or using the natural world as an extension of their aesthetic—such as the Amanyara in Turks & Caicos, pictured here—these new contenders are creative and inspired, and invite no comparisons to M.C. Escher.
Published April 2008









