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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Aman’s slick new brand lands in Tokyo
Azabudai Hills, in Minato Ward, is one of the most ambitious development projects Toyko has seen in years: part urban-regeneration initiative – Heatherwick Studio has contributed several acres of elegant greenery – and part lifestyle one, with hundreds of galleries, restaurants and shops. There’s only one hotel, but it’s suitably newsworthy: Janu Toyko is the 122-key flagship in a new brand from Aman, the collection owned since 2014 by Russian real-estate mogul Vladislav Doronin. Doronin has parlayed a clutch of chic resorts into a muscular global hospitality-residential enterprise. Janu wants to be a younger, slicker iteration of the full-bore luxury its big sibling proposes, with less eye-watering room rates (admittedly still bordering on $1,000 a night, but it’s Tokyo, after all).
Design superstar Jean-Michel Gathy is behind every last vignette, including the striking shimenawa woven-rope and lattice-wood ceiling in the vast reception. There are 4,000sq m of spa, including a lap pool, hydrotherapy and thermal areas, five movement studios, a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and the only full-sized boxing ring in a Toyko hotel. Wellness freaks, this may be your new Toyko home. janu.com, from $991
The Dorchester Group takes Dubai
While The Dorchester in London has been undergoing a multi-stage refurb, leaning confidently into its illustrious history, the Dorchester Group’s first new hotel opening in nearly 13 years is looking to the future in Dubai. The Lana – all 225 suites, residences, spa, shopping gallery and eight restaurants of it – is in a purpose-built Foster + Partners-designed tower that sits like a sprawling, elegant game of Jenga on Business Bay. The interiors are by Patrick Gilles and Dorothee Boissier, both alumni of Christian Liaigre’s studio (lately enjoying major success creating residences, restaurants and their own furniture-accessories line).
The rooms and suites are spare, spacious and replete with 21st-century technology, as would be expected; but Gilles and Boissier mitigate hard edges with material richness such as gleaming rosewood boiserie, and just enough colour. This is destination hospitality writ large (as hospitality often is in Dubai), with a phalanx of celebrity chefs – among whose ranks are Martín Berasategui and Paris’s favourite enfant terrible (and sometime Pharrell Williams collaborator) Jean Imbert, whom the hotel group tapped to replace Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée in Paris in 2021. dorchestercollection.com, from Dh3,400 (about £730)
Tribeca gets the Firmdale treatment
Kit Kemp, who founded Firmdale Hotels with her husband Tim almost 40 years ago, has carved out a hugely successful corner in London and, more recently, New York. From Soho’s Ham Yard to Marylebone’s Dorset Square, where their first property opened in 1985, Kit’s decorator’s hand is the group’s calling card: she builds joyous rooms, suites and restaurants (and bustling bars, cinemas, and sometimes even indoor pools).
February marked the opening of a third New York address, The Warren, in the heart of Tribeca, and housed in its own purpose-built tower. All Kemp’s beloved design signifiers are present, from ornate embroidered headboards to powder-coated steel windows, with scads of pretty painted-wood furniture and the occasional turntable and box of vinyl in between. Downstairs there’s the usual all-day to late-night eponymous brasserie, for grazing on NYC time. firmdalehotels.com, from $925
Parisian style in Palma de Mallorca
With its buzzing roof terrace bar scene and all manner of amenities, from complimentary bikes to cocktail classes, Barcelona’s Casa Bonay packs ambience and cheery, colour-saturated design into a hotel that doesn’t break the bank. This month owners Enrique and Ines Miró Sans are taking things up several notches in Palma de Mallorca, with Portella, their second property.
It’s the first Spanish design project of any kind for the Paris-based studio Festen, which has rocketed into the spotlight to become one of the most in-demand among Europe’s discerning hoteliers. While Portella is the opposite of Casa Bonay, it’s apposite for medieval-moorish Palma; all is a staid, natural palette of earth, stone and lime wash. The metalwork is understated, the wood furniture hand-hewn (much of it faithfully reproduced from original pieces in the building), the linens all unbleached. The traditional central courtyard is now an alfresco living room-bar; downstairs in the former pottery ovens is a bathhouse-style wellness space. portellapalma.com, from €300
