W Guangzhou hotel unlocks another side of the city

Less than a decade ago the area was little more than a communal farm. But today, Zhujiang New Town is Guangzhou's towering central business district, with skyscrapers soaring higher than 400 metres and futuristic structures such as Zaha Hadid's Guangzhou Opera House.

It's a bold statement of the city's determination to become something more than a gateway to China's factories, and its desire to re-position itself as a creative hub.

So it's perhaps not surprising that W Hotels, a chain that prides itself on being design-led, would choose this as the place to open its first hotel in the mainland. The new W Guangzhou hotel avoids looking like a wallflower in the architectural beauty parade, thanks to its asymmetrical black glass exterior, designed by Rocco Yim, the Hong Kong architect who also created the nearby Guangdong Museum.

Parts of the exterior are sheathed in light-coloured glass so you can see into them more easily from the outside. Fei Lounge, the hotel's multistorey nightclub, is one such area. When you arrive at the hotel at night, you notice the pulsating lights emanating from the club.

Modern art is everywhere in the public spaces. At the entrance, LED lights are placed behind a 19-metre high waterfall, and a video installation of glittery moving lips loops on a screen inside the lifts.

This hotel is anything but bland, though the consciously hip decor and the dark, noisy, club-like lobby is likely to turn off more traditional guests. Woobar is clearly a place to people watch and be seen - the bar itself is sunken so that the bartenders don't obstruct the guests' views of each other.