Check out the Michelin Guide’s top 5 ‘Best Architecture and Design Hotels’ | Destination-of-the-week News
3 min readNew DelhiFeb 15, 2026 10:00 PM Luxury travel isn’t just about exploring exotic locales. The views, the stay, the food — everything makes for a memorable holiday, starting with the hotel you choose. For architecture enthusiasts, whose hearts start racing at the sight of stunning design and skilled genius, the Michelin Guide’s top 5 picks for the Best Architecture and Design category are the perfect starting point to plan the perfect getaway that celebrates their hob.
Here’s a quick look at the winners for the year 2025:
1. Atlantis The Royal, Dubai
According to the official website of The Michelin Guide, the avant-garde silhouette of Atlantis The Royal conss of six interconnected towers, each composed of terraced, cantilevered blocks with their own spaces and amenities. The interlocking design creates a myriad of naturally ventilated, shaded outdoor spaces for hotel guests, resulting in a building that feels less like a hotel, and more like a green neighbourhood.
2. Shebara Resort, Saudi Arabia
Shebara Resort is the country’s answer to the overwater villas of the Maldives. 73 villas, designed to resemble shimmering pearls, were constructed off-site and transported here nearly complete to minimize disruption. 38 villas sit directly over the water itself, supported narrow columns meant to durb as little of the ocean floor as possible. If you want to snorkel among coral reefs, this is your place to be.
Atlantis The Royal, Dubai (Source: Instagram/@theatlantis)
3. Rosewood São Paulo, Brazil
“Designed like a 93-metre-tall, 22-story vertical garden tower, wrapped in wooden lattice and clad with over 10,000 growing trees indigenous to the Mata Atlântica rainforest, the Rosewood tower’s innovative design addresses urban environmental challenges reintroducing native flora to the metropolitan landscape,” reads the Guide’s website. The stay offers 160 guest rooms and over 100 resident suites along with multiple swimming pools and 6 restaurants.
4. Benesse House, Japan
Conceptualised in 1992 Tadao Ando, a Pritzker Prize winner and one of Japan’s most renowned architects, the merging gallery spaces of this building create a museum- hotel hybrid in Naoshima. The building premises are divvied up into sections. “While the minimal concrete form of Museum is partially embedded into the coastal landscape, Oval features an open-air reflecting pool encircled a sun-drenched portico, Park blurs the line between inside and outside, and Beach, with sightlines aligned with the sea’s surface, creates the impression of a floating structure,” described the website.
5. Villa Nai 3.3, Croatia
Located on the Adriatic island of Dugi Otok, Villa Nai 3.3 sits in the lap of hills. Carved out excavated stone, the hotel is created with the sole purpose of limiting emissions, and inspired traditional Dalmatian building methods such as dry stone walling. The result is a beautiful amalgamation of “edifice and environment”, that blends together the island’s topography with that of architectural skill and expertise.
