The first guests at western Europe’s tallest hotel came expecting unforgettable views – but may have got more than they bargained for.

The bedrooms in Shangri-La’s luxury hotel, which opened last week in London’s 310m-tall Shard building, come with binoculars so guests can survey the city’s landmarks through the floor-to-ceiling windows. But thanks to a quirk in the building’s design, some rooms also come with potentially revealing views of other guests. — ft.com

To get a sense of the kind of hotel they wanted, Mr. Stockhausen did extensive research with Mr. Anderson. This included looking at vintage images at the Library of Congress of hotels and European vacation spots. They also looked through hotel archives and studied the architecture of locales like the Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. — nytimes.com

Scenery at The Myrtle Flower Garden in Xiangyang, China will look quite different once the new hillside Myrtle Garden Hotel is built. Designed by graft lab architects and penda as a commission, the wooden haptic-structured hotel is ready to break ground within the next few weeks. — bustler.net

Are you interested in visiting South Africa? Interested in seeing the real South Africa? Interested in experiencing how the real people live? Interested in tasting the poverty and hardship of life in a shanty town? And—most importantly—are you fearful and white? Congratulations! You're a perfect guest for the Shanty Town at Emoya Luxury Hotel and Spa, where, for less than $100 a night, you can get the authentic experience of living in a shanty town—without the bothersome shanty dwellers. — gawker.com

Since October 2013, staying at one of the 1920s-style Bauhaus dorm rooms is even more of an experience: One room was accurately reconstructed with original objects and furniture. The rest of the rooms will be personalized to reflect a former habitant, beginning with Alfred Arndt, the couple Albers and Franz Ehrlich. — bauhaus-dessau.de

The Eero Saarinen-designed terminal will be transformed into a hotel and conference center, along with food and beverage offerings, retail space, a spa and fitness center, meeting facilities and a flight museum.

“It is a great honor to be entrusted with the preservation and revitalization of this masterpiece by my personal architectural hero,” said Balazs. He added that he’s looking forward to the approval of his final proposal by the PA board, but didn’t comment on a specific time frame. — pagesix.com

The finalists of the 2013 Radical Innovation in Hospitality competition recently gathered during Hospitality Design Expo in Las Vegas to present their ideas for the next big hotel concept in front of a jury of top industry judges. [...] the Copenhagen-based international architecture collective PinkCloud.dk took home the $10,000 grand prize for its Pop-Up Hotel concept, which utilizes empty Class A office spaces in urban centers, turning them into temporary hospitality spaces. — bustler.net

Scientists and engineers from the Faculty of Ocean Engineering and Ship Technology at Gdansk University in Poland have teamed up with other Polish scientific and R&D institutions to come up with a landmark underwater hotel.

The Water Discus Underwater Hotel, as it is called, may not be the first but plans for the Dubai venue call for the biggest site of its kind. — DesignBuild Source

At the annual SLEEP European Hotel Design Awards, the project "Hotel Valentiner Hof" in Castelrotto, Italy was recently named the 2012 winner in the category "Conversion And/Or Extension Of An Existing Hotel Building." Architects of the hotel conversion was the young firm noa*, based in Bolzano in Northern Italy. — bustler.net

Danish firm HAO / Holm Architecture Office has shared with us its competition entry for a high-end hotel in Tianjin, Northern China. — bustler.net

A delegation from the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea, which inspected the building almost 15 years ago, concluded it was beyond repair and its lift shafts crooked.

But in 2008 an Egyptian company, Orascom Telecom, which operates a mobile network in North Korea, began equipping the building.

Mr Wittwer said the hotel will "partially, probably" open for business next year.

But original plans for 3,000 hotel rooms and three revolving restaurants have been greatly scaled back. — bbc.co.uk

The Sofitel is hosting a competition in which thirteen graduate students from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago will design both an interior and exterior future concept for a fictional Sofitel property in either Helsinki, Finland, Mozambique, or Lima, Peru—sites varying from an urban center, to an eco-resort to a traditional beach resort. — chicagoist.com

“In looking at these designs, I think back and remember that some people predicted the terrorist attacks of 2001 would end our lust for travel,” notes Albrecht, who teaches in the decorative arts masters program at Cooper-Hewitt and is currently working on an exhibition of airports—another architectural hotspot. “But today, some ten years later, one of the ur-building types of tourism and globalization—the hotel—is alive and well and remains on the cutting-edge of architectural trends.” — Forbes Magazine

London-based photographer Peter Guenzel explores the sparse and calming atmosphere of former limestone refinery turned eco hotel, Fabriken Furillen... the minimalist retreat is set amid the area’s untrammeled natural beauty featuring rocky coastline, wind-swept pines and glistening sea... founder Johan Hellström preserved its original infrastructure and recycled local materials such as concrete, limestone and hardwood to build the hotel's 17 rooms. — nowness.com