Six shophouses from the 1900s, lined up along Mosque Street in Chinatown, were reworked by Spacedge Design into Mono, a 46-room hotel built entirely around a black, white and grey palette. Because the original shophouse floor plans varied so much, no two of the industrial-styled rooms are alike, though all share the same seamless black metal bar that snakes through the space as lighting, coat hook and art piece at once. Conservation rules mean there's no restaurant on site, but that's hardly a hardship: the hawker stalls of Maxwell Road and the eateries of Ann Siang Hill are a short stroll away. Mono works best as a calm, design-forward base for exploring one of the city's most energetic districts.
