Art Hotels

Cocoa Island reads less like a resort than a row of moored boats. Its overwater rooms borrow their silhouette from the dhoni, the wooden vessel that has worked these atolls for centuries, and the reference is structural rather than ornamental — the hulls, the raised decks, the narrow walkways all follow from it.

Inside, the palette is almost entirely white, with timber and rope doing the work that pattern usually does. Rooms open onto the lagoon directly; a ladder from the deck is the shortest route into the water.

Wellness is a serious part of the programme here, with treatment rooms and a nutrition-led kitchen running alongside the standard restaurant menu. The island is small enough to cross on foot in a few minutes, which shapes the pace of a stay more than any schedule does.

Alpine timber and Asian restraint meet in this hotel at the head of the Urseren valley. The architecture keeps the chalet vocabulary — dark wood, deep eaves, stone — but the interiors are laid out with the spareness of a gallery, and the two registers hold together better than the description suggests.

Fireplaces anchor the public rooms. Glass-fronted hearths, cured-meat and cheese cabinets on display, and long sightlines through the lobby make the ground floor a place people linger rather than pass through.

The spa occupies a substantial part of the building, and a heated indoor pool runs under a high timber ceiling. Skiing on the Gemsstock and the Oberalp is reached from the village; in summer, the same slopes carry walking routes.

Few hotels are as thoroughly governed by their site. Amangiri is built into a bowl of desert rock in southern Utah, with cast concrete tuned to the colour of the surrounding sandstone and a central pool wrapped around a stone escarpment that was left exactly where it stood.

Rooms are low, flat-roofed and glazed toward the desert. Many have private courtyards and roof terraces; the building's job, as designed, is to frame the landscape rather than compete with it.

Beyond the property the terrain does the programming — slot canyons, plateau walks, and the wider Colorado Plateau within driving range. Nights here are notably dark, and the sky is a large part of what guests remember.