Brisbane's new Calile Hotel dubs itself an "urban resort", a kind of one-stop R&R shop with all the buzz of inner-city living. The $100 million building – a white brick and concrete composition of zigzag geometries and elegant barrel vaulting – was designed by local architects Ingrid Richards and Adrian Spence, who are carving out a niche for themselves as purveyors of an edgy subtropical modernism.

Located in the newly groovy James Street precinct five kilometres from the CBD, The Calile Hotel is rigorous and crisp, confidently breezy – Richards refers to the style of the seven-storey, 175-room hotel as "gentle brutalism" – and signals a new Queenslander chic.