Kimpton Marlowe Hotel

In East Cambridge, Massachusetts, by the side of the Charles River, the Kimpton Marlowe Hotel plays on both its riverside setting and its proximity to such engines of innovation as MIT and Harvard — and its address, on a boulevard named for Edwin H. Land, the inventor of the Polaroid camera. The look is playfully sober, if that’s not a contradiction in terms — a sort of soft sci-fi look, one part industrial, one part minimalist, and one part warmly organic, with saturated greens and blues drawn from nature against a monochrom backdrop of white and gray.

The rooms are as likely to be occupied by tech-industry travelers or MIT parents as by history-minded Boston tourists, and they’re suitably swanky, with a plushness to match their sleekness, and luxe details like Atelier Bloem bath products and Tivoli bedside radios. The best views look out over the river towards Boston’s skyline.

Meanwhile the Marlowe is the new home of Cambridge’s well-loved Bambara Kitchen + Bar, an eclectic and globally inspired New American restaurant and bar. And the Lobby Bar is no afterthought; decked out in bold colors and graphic prints, it’s something of an escape unto itself.