Fitness brand Equinox has opened its first hotel at New York's Hudson Yards, where guests can enjoy views of Thomas Heatherwick's Vessel while bathing in the rooftop pool.

The Equinox Hotel in New York City marks the luxury fitness brand's hospitality debut, with future outposts in Houston, Los Angeles and Chicago currently in development.

The flagship spans 14 floors of a limestone and glass residential skyscraper designed by architecture firm SOM, located in the district built over a Manhattan rail yard.

Rockwell Group designed the 212-room hotel and indoor-outdoor Electric Lemon restaurant by Stephen Starr, while London's Joyce Wang Studio completed the spa and fitness club.

Guest rooms are referred to as "sleep chambers", optimised for rest and relaxation with a total-blackout window system, padded walls, and upholstered headboards to enhance soundproofing.

A bedside iPad allows for digital control of guests' sleep environment, including a setting that reduces the room temperature to a sleep-inducing 19-degrees Celsius. A dressing area sits just off the main room.

Equinox partnered with Greek firm Coco-Mat to customise all-natural mattresses made of seaweed, natural latex, coconut fibre and eucalyptus, among other organic materials.

They are appointed with two separate duvets to enable temperature regulation – a Scandinavian technique utilised when sharing a bed.

Rockwell Group's hotel bar is lined with polished stone and furnished with low-slung seating and tables and painterly rugs. Rotating mirrored cabinets are installed to hide bottles behind the bar in the morning, and reveal them when it's time for a tipple.

The hotel's restaurant, Electric Lemon, boasts a large outdoor terrace overlooking the Hudson River with an infinity reflecting pool and human figure sculpture by Jaume Plensa.

Joyce Wang Studio crafted the spa and fitness club – the largest in Equinox's worldwide portfolio – to "convey the power of motion" as a series of unraveling spaces.

The reception area features a dynamic, colliding wood plank pattern, with stretched foil ceiling panels in gloss black. Twisted steel details on the staircase nod to the rail lines beneath the building's foundation.

An indoor saltwater lap pool, two plunge pools, and an outdoor pool deck with views of the Thomas Heatherwick's Vessel are part of the sprawling fitness complex.

The spa also contains a cryotherapy chamber, river-facing relaxation pods, and a "jewel box-like" hair salon with curved glass doors and timber pillows.

Equinox Hotel forms part of the first phase of the city's Hudson Yards development, which was built over an active rail yard on Manhattan's West Side.

Phase one also includes The Shed, a telescoping cultural hub designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro,  two sister office towers and another corporate block by Hudson Yards masterplanner KPF and a tall building by Foster + Partners.

Photography is by Collin Hughes.