Straddling the Yas Marina Circuit like a bridge across the Formula 1 track, the shell enclosing W Abu Dhabi — Yas Island is one of the more audacious structural gestures in contemporary hospitality architecture. Asymmetric Engineering and Hyder Consulting engineered the building beneath its signature canopy, but it was Asymptote Architecture — Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture — who conceived the 217-room hotel's defining element: a diagrid steel-and-glass dome spanning two towers and arching over the pit lane, clad in some 5,000 individual ETFE and glass panels that shift colour through LED lighting after dark. Seen from the marina, where superyachts moor alongside the circuit infrastructure, the structure carries the feeling of a spacecraft that has settled, improbably, into the Abu Dhabi waterfront. Inside, the two towers hold rooms whose floor-to-ceiling glazing frames either the marina or the track itself — the latter placing guests directly above the circuit's service road, the lattice of the canopy's steel geometry visible through the glass. The W brand's signature design sensibility runs through the interiors: angular bed frames in dark lacquer, cloud-form crystal chandeliers, and abstract patterned rugs in the upper suites, while the lobby bar deploys curved tan leather banquettes, fuchsia velvet ottomans, and a gold geometric screen behind the bar counter. The rooftop pool sits within the curve of the dome's upper edge, white tubular structural ribs arching overhead, the whole deck open to the Gulf sky above Yas Island's flat horizon.

No travel notes provided yet.

No description provided yet.