LOCATION A 10-minute walk north of London’s financial district, this übercool design hotel is at the heart of Shoreditch, home of black-clad new media and fashion types. It’s around 20 minutes in a taxi from City Airport, 40 minutes from Stansted Airport via the Stansted Express from Liverpool Street Station, and one hour from Heathrow Airport via express train and underground.

AMBIENCE A joint venture between legendary English designer Terence Conran and Peter Prescott, the former Victorian warehouse at 2 Boundary Street has been preserved but completely modernised, withevery room being inspired by different designers. The sandblasted walls and outsized aesthetics seem at once deeply British and inherently international.

GUESTROOMS 12 rooms, each themed after a different designer (think Charles and Ray Eames and Eileen Gray) are all spacious, the smallest being 31m2, while the five suites are all sophisticated duplexes in the warehouse tradition.

SERVICE Understated, friendly and uncomplicated

CAN I WORK HERE? If you want break out rooms and conference centres, then go somewhere else. Boundary is strictly for the solo traveller or small group, who is satisfied with free Wi-fi and well-designed furniture and lighting.

CAN I LIVE HERE? From the retro English café on the street level to the locally sourced furniture and English brands, including REN toiletries in the bathroom and Plymouth gin in the first-rate mini bar, every detail in the rooms seems to have been carefully thought out. The robes are ultra soft; the bath tubs capacious but not overbearing. All fixtures and fittings would get the seal of approval from even your coolest Scandianvian mates, yet the details — such as his and hers shoe trees and velvety wing-back chairs in the style of 18th-century Shoreditch — remain reassuringly English.

WORTH NOTING The hotel has two ultra-green 120m-deep borehole pumps for water and heating, which obviates the need for fierce air conditioning in the summer. You can buy what you see in your room if you like it.