Albert Hill, founding director of The Modern House, chose Hotel Il Palazzo by Aldo Rossi in Fukuoka, Japan as his favourite building.

Albert says: ‘this combines my love of Italian and Japanese design – a building in Japan by an Italian.  I also thought that since everyone else seems to have gone down the Brutalist route I’d go for something a little lighter in spirit.’

Completed in 1989, the 62-room  hotel is in Fukuoka in southern Japan.

From one angle the building appears to have no windows, Albert chose it because ‘it’s just a building that plays with typologies, plays with our expectations and plays with classical and contemporary forms – a playful building in other words!’