United Places Hotel Botanic Gardens

At United Places the bath is sunk in stone into an alcove of one-way glass, so the bather gets the view and the view gets nothing back. CARR built the hotel from the ground up in 2018, on Domain Road opposite the Royal Botanic Gardens, and built it brutalist: sandblasted concrete trimmed in bronze, and blades of blackened steel. Twelve suites, three floors. The one-bedroom Garden Suites face north over the gardens, 67 square metres behind floor-to-ceiling glass with a deep terrace beyond; on the south side the suites look over the rooftops and laneways of South Yarra, the less green view and the more Melbourne one. Inside, the concrete relents into navy quilting and plum velvet.

Recommended for a couple who want an apartment's worth of room with a hotel's daily housekeeping, or two couples sharing the Garden Suite Two Bedroom, which sleeps four. Every suite has its own kitchen and washing machine. There is no restaurant or bar in the building, and no need of one: Gilson, 50 metres away, and the Botanical Hotel's bar and grill both deliver to the suite, and the kitchen is there for anyone who would rather cook. The Tan running track loops the gardens 200 metres from the door, and the All Ours Running Club sets off round them at six on Saturday mornings, for anyone who wants company at that hour. The hotel's Tokyobikes are for the riverside paths; the Melbourne Cricket Ground is fifteen minutes on foot. The hotel stands where the local post office and newsagent used to be, and it has kept up the deliveries.