The Upper House, Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s upscale hotels scale dizzying heights of luxury, and lately its more adventurous boutiques have been setting the bar high for style. And now there are hotels that do a bit of both: the Upper House, with over a hundred rooms, is bigger than a boutique hotel, and its crisp-edged Chinese modernist look, courtesy of designer Andre Fu, is quite a lot more sober than some of the whimsical little designers’ hotels.

It’s less like a compromise and more like the best of both worlds. It’s a skyscraper-top hotel in the contemporary Asian luxury mold, with all the trappings: spacious bedrooms and enormous bathrooms, with floor-to-ceiling windows offering views from everywhere, whether the king beds or the free-standing limestone-clad bathtubs. And while you might expect a look that’s a bit middle-of-the-road, the Upper House has a surprisingly strong point of view, if a sleek and minimal one.

Technology pervades the entire experience, from the airport transfer via hybrid Lexus to the rooms controlled not by some clunky LCD but by an iPod Touch. Of course not all the charms are high-tech: the restaurant and bar on the 49th floor offer widescreen views of Victoria Harbour and the Hong Kong skyline — and down on the sixth floor there’s an open-air lawn, a rare and welcome bit of green space in a very urban town.