Poolens Play
Four kinds of hotel,
mapped by character
Art, capsule, casino and ice hotels — described in plain prose, with nothing sold and nothing booked on these pages.
The four regions of this index
Each cluster below is one category. The rings are a reading device rather than a map of anywhere real: the outer lines are the broad idea, the centre is the small set of properties actually written up. Follow a cluster to read the entries.
Art Hotels
Hotels where the collection, the commission or the interior itself is the reason the building is remembered.
Capsule Hotels
Compact, efficiently planned hotels built around small sleeping units and generous shared rooms.
Casino Hotels
Full-service hotels that happen to include a gaming floor among their facilities.
Ice Hotels
Seasonal structures rebuilt each winter from snow and ice, and dismantled by the thaw.
How this index is written
Every entry here was written for this site. There are no star ratings, no review scores, no aggregated guest sentiment and no booking engine — those things are handled well elsewhere, and handled badly by a small editorial index. What is offered instead is description: what the building was before it was a hotel, how the rooms are planned, what the surrounding streets are like, and what a guest is likely to notice first.
Facts are kept general and true to the character of each property rather than pinned to figures that drift between seasons. Where a category is thin, it is left thin and the reason is stated. Where something has changed, the entry will be rewritten rather than quietly patched.