Square space

NOBU HOTEL PORTMAN SQUARE, LONDON

Japanese restaurateur-turned-hotelier Nobu Matsuhisa is really showing London some love. He is set to unveil the British capital’s second Nobu Hotel later this year, this time swapping the gentrified edginess of Shoreditch for the considerably more soigné setting of Marylebone’s Portman Square. Working with Make Architects, David Collins Studio has transformed the former Radisson Blu into a 249-room minimalist bolthole. From the entrance all the way up to the penthouse, the aesthetic is the by-now familiar MO of Japan-lite accented with tactile fabrics, bespoke furniture and artwork. All the accoutrements of a big-city hotel are accounted for – including a 700-person ballroom – but it’s familiar pleasures that will lure Nobu devotees through the front door of the brand’s 11th hotel, not least an outpost of the owner’s eponymous restaurant, where pride of place in the modern South Americaninflected Japanese menu is reserved for the signature black cod miso. DW

22 Portman Square, W1, tel: 44.20 7208 6000, london-portman.nobuhotels.com. Rates: from £345

46: Fretwork panels in the lobby

1,120: Temperature in degrees Celsius of the glassblowing fire used to create Jeremy Maxwellwintrebert’s cloud pendant

31,414: Black marble chips inlaid in the floor slabs at Nobu Bar