Hotel Unique

A jarring 95-room boutique hotel – nicknamed the "Little Watermelon" for it's wacky, half-slice exterior – designed by architect Ruy Ohtake near the city's best neighborhoods

• Cocktails on the rooftop Skye Bar are São Paulo's hippest drinks with a view
• Sexy bathrooms can be as playful (or not) as guests would like
• The extreme architecture is nothing if not memorable
• With four employees per room, needs never go unattended

The moment Hotel Unique (pronounced Unique-y) comes into view, you quickly understand something different this way comes. Famed Brazilian-Japanese architect Ruy Ohtake wasn't going for subtlety when he built this ultra-trendy, 95-room boutique hotel shaped like a slice of watermelon in order to seize commanding 360° city views from higher floors.

Guests enter through an imposing 25-foot high, 650-pound double entrance door into a glass-framed, open-spaced lobby that certainly feels more MOMA than hotel. Minimalist Italian chairs by Fendi and trendy loungeware by Gaetano Pesce and Hugo Franca lead to a 300-bottle, 36 foot–high Lobby Bar and adjacent library, stocked full of books on architecture, design and fashion. Glance skyward the sky-lit atrium frames a top floor water mirror.

Criminally unlit, curved hallways lead to rooms which are iPod-white from top to bottom, save the slanted hardwood infinity flooring which curves up the side wall in the suites – it is here, a direct result of the curved nature of the building itself, that the TV is mounted. Bathrooms feature a collapsible window separating the bathtub with the bed, allowing for interesting viewing should one chose. As expected, modcons are ubiquitous, including newly introduced Apple TV consoles in every room.

On the roof, the real coup: Skye Bar, a hip lounge and restaurant, which gives way to the 25m-long open-air infinity pool – lipstick red and featuring an underwater soundtrack – that only stops when the astonishing views of downtown São Paulo come into focus across the green-swept Jardims Europa neighborhood.

Rockstars, models and other fashion-forward trendsetters – this is currently São Paulo's only spot for you.