The 9 Hours is a capsule hotel: a Japanese hotel concept with sleeping pods instead of rooms, and shared bathrooms. They target hard-working business people and travelers.

Usually, these capsule hotels are far from well-designed. The 9 Hours is nothing like that. Instead, it's an amazing example of applied minimalism.

The 9 Hours is managed by Tokyo-based Cubic Inc., and designed in a collaboration with designer Fumie Shibata of Design Studio S.

Monocle recently did an excellent report on the hotel, which we have embedded here. (Thx, Peter!)