The Five Best 'Starchitect' Hotels

2. Le Meridien Turin Art + Tech, Italy
When it was built in the 1920s, the fivestorey Fiat factory and headquarters in Turin was the most advanced of its kind in the world. But the plant closed in the early Eighties and lay idle for a decade. Eventually, the celebrated Genoese architect, Renzo Piano, was called upon to steer the sprawling plant’s transformation into a huge entertainment complex, including a cinema, university, hotel and a gallery. In 2003, Piano also designed the Le Méridien Turin Art + Tech, a 142-room, five-star hotel forming part of the Lingotto building and now the ultimate in industrial chic. Guests get to lie in bed under Piano-designed Le Perroquet lights with specially commissioned furniture in the rooms. The 1km rooftop testing track, which guest-starred in the classic Sixties film The Italian Job, has been given a new lease of life as the hotel’s jogging circuit. It is the ideal place for visitors to Turin’s celebration next year as World Design Capital.
Le Meridien Art + Tech, Via Nizza, Turin, Italy (00 39 011 664 2000; www.starwoodhotels.com).
Doubles start at €164 (£117), room only.

3. Hotel Puerta America Spain
Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, David Chipperfield... the Hotel Puerta America might well be the ultimate destination for design junkies. Each of the 14 floors of this Madrid hotel were designed by some of the world’s most influential architects and designers. You can plump for one of the rooms on the second floor, designed by Foster, which are inspired by the materials used by the celebrated Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida, or cosset yourself in the luxurious textural contrasts – all terracotta floors, marble and leather – conceived by British architect David Chipperfield on the third floor.
Hotel Puerta America, Avenida de América 41, Madrid, Spain (00 34 917 445 400; www.hoteles-silken.com/hpam).
Doubles from €187 (£136).

4. Radisson SAS Denmark
Decide for yourself whether you agree with Arne Jacobsen’s philosophy of elegant functionalism by checking into the SAS Royal Hotel. Everything, from the exterior of this gleaming skyscraper – Denmark’s first – to the Swan chairs that grace the lobby,was designed by Jacobsen, the unofficial patron saint ofDanish design. Many of the rooms have been updated over the years, but Room 606 still contains all the original Jacobsen decor from 1960 when the hotel first opened.
Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Hammerichsgade 1, Copenhagen, Denmark (00 45 33 42 6000; www.radissonsas.com).
Doubles from DK1,645 (£157). Room 606 from DK4,900 (£469).

5. Four Seasons New York US
The iconic Four Seasons Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is a regular haunt for New York’s incrowd, who like to see and be seen at the hotel’s 57 Restaurant (pictured). But the hotel is also a must-see for architecture fans: I M Pei's 52-floor structure features a soaring three-storey entrance hall, complete with black onyx ceiling and limestone clad walls. What’s more, last July, the world’s most expensive hotel suite, the Ty Warner Penthouse, was unveiled. For the staggering US$30,000 (£15,000) it costs to slip between the sheets of one of its nine guestrooms, you get to occupy the top floor of the city’s tallest hotel and appreciate some of the finest views of the Big Apple.
Four Seasons New York, 57 East 57th Street, New York City, US (001 212 758 5700; www.fourseasons.com).
Doubles from $495 (£247), room only.