There are wonders of the world to trek to and bucket-list hotels in which to celebrate life’s milestones. Then there are spa treatments worthy of a transcontinental pilgrimage. As wellness resorts and top hotels compete to create ever more ambitious experiences, the treatment itself has become reason enough to make the trip. From futuristic facials at Paris’ largest hotel spa to site-specific spa safaris in Indonesia and centuries-old purification rituals in Morocco, these are the best spa treatments to travel for.

The best spa treatments around the world

Aman Kyoto

Set at the base of the Higashiyama Mountains, within one of Kyoto’s most serene spa resorts, this three-step Purifying Journey unfolds overlooking the property’s famed Secret Garden. Over 180 minutes, guests experience a Purifying Body Polish & Wrap, Purifying Massage and Purifying Facial. The opening body treatment is designed to encourage lymphatic drainage, using quartz, seaweed-rich fucus oil, raw honey, essential oils and other mineral-rich marine ingredients. The Purifying Massage follows the same intention, while the concluding facial uses brightening pearl and further marine extracts.

Aman Kyoto is located at 1 Okitayama Washimine-cho, Kita Ward, Kyoto, 603-8458, Japan

Ananda In The Himalayas

Ananda in the Himalayas has spent decades establishing itself as a leading authority on destination Ayurvedic wellness. In Ayurveda, the Koshtha is the body’s internal cavity, which houses the digestive and reproductive organs. During this 45-minute Abhyanga massage, a medicated castor oil known as Gadharva-hastadi thailam is applied in movements designed to follow the natural pathways of these systems. Towards the end, steam is directed over the abdomen and pelvis to deepen absorption and encourage circulation. The property’s chief operating officer, Mahesh Natarajan, says the treatment is shaped by years of research and observation, and has become a keystone of its week-long women’s health modules.

Ananda In The Himalayas is located at The Palace Estate, Narendra Nagar, Sakalana, Uttarakhand 249175, India

Lanserhof Sylt

More an immersive seven-day experience than a traditional treatment, Lanserhof’s signature programme, The Cure, has set the gold standard for holistic wellness and longevity for 40 years. Each stay is unique. Its constants are a medical assessment on arrival and a dining programme designed to support gut regeneration, a central component of The Cure. Day to day, a guest’s schedule may encompass treatments, movement, relaxation sessions, lectures, meals and downtime. For some, the on-site team may recommend Inuspheresis or neurofeedback sessions to address sleep issues and other contemporary lifestyle concerns.

Lanserhof Sylt is located at Am Lanserhof 1-8, 25992 List auf Sylt, Germany

NIHI Sumba

True wellness devotees – those regularly texting their energy healer or with standing energy-work reservations – speak of NIHI Sumba with reverence. While the wider resort experience is a coveted adventure in itself, its signature Spa Safari offers a full-day, culturally rich immersion. The fully outdoor experience brings together Sumbanese ritual, indigenous botanicals and equine therapy. Guests arrive by horseback or safari vehicle at an open-air bale overlooking the Indian Ocean, where a series of bespoke Sumbanese rituals might include the signature Sumba 7 Botanical Elixir facial, a volcanic body wrap or a Hydrating Hair Smoothie. All treatments use locally sourced ingredients and conclude with an equine massage: an elevated foot massage surrounded by horses.

NIHI Sumba is located at Hoba Wawi, Wanokaka, West Sumba Regency, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Pendry Newport Beach

Set in Newport Beach, California’s aesthetics mecca, Spa Pendry’s Ultimate Facial is a fully customised, near two-hour treatment with maximalist intent. It is entirely high-tech, save for a glass of Champagne at the end: skin undergoes a series of zips and zaps designed to improve tone and texture, while supporting healthy ageing. The experience includes exfoliation, hydration, microcurrent, LED therapy, cryotherapy and bespoke add-ons such as dermaplaning. Its fans include Orange County’s taut and toned housewives, naturally, as well as Los Angeles’ most plugged-in beauty influencers, for whom the freeway journey may as well be a plane flight.

Pendry Newport Beach is located at 690 Newport Centre Dr, Newport Beach, CA 92660, United States

The Peninsula Paris

The largest hotel spa in Paris may be home to a striking 20-metre subterranean swimming pool, but the savvy skincare set is likely to be drawn to the property’s partnership with Parisian medspa Maison Lutetia, which brings its high-tech philosophy to a traditional luxury spa setting. The partnership’s signature Expert Cellulaire Treatment merges these two worlds through a protocol designed to improve skin metabolism and glow, using a combination of devices and hands-on techniques. A great deal is packed into its 60- or 90-minute sessions: the five-step protocol begins with an Aquapeel and electroporation to enhance absorption, followed by electrostimulation, cryotherapy and thermotherapy, before concluding with LED light therapy. There is no downtime afterwards, so guests can go straight from the spa to dinner.

The Peninsula Paris is located at 19 Av. Kléber, 75116 Paris, France

Royal Mansour Marrakech

A decadent hammam in a design-led spa is a compelling draw at any hotel, wherever it may be, but nothing compares with the real thing in Morocco, using Moroccan-made products. At Le Spa, this contemporary interpretation of the historic ritual begins on a heated marble slab, where guests recline in the humidity to soften the skin before a head-to-toe scrub with a traditional kessa glove and black soap. A cleansing rinse and invigorating cold plunge follow. The full-day hammam experience extends into a spa journey, with a traditional Takhilta hair wrap, facial, massage, lunch, shampoo and blow-dry.

Royal Mansour Marrakech is located at Rue Abou Abbas El Sebti، 40000, Morocco

Sensei Lanai, A Four Seasons Resort

Sensei Lanai is one of the few destinations where what happens after the therapist leaves the room is as memorable as the treatment itself. Tucked amid lush tropical grounds, the spa hales that host the property’s treatments can be booked for additional time following almost any solo or couples treatment. Each private, standalone space becomes a personal spa retreat, equipped with an Ofuro bath, infrared sauna, steam shower, outdoor rain shower, soaking tub, plunge pool and generous living area. The hales can also be booked as an evening experience for up to 120 minutes.

Sensei Lanai, A Four Seasons Resort is located at 1 Keomoku Highway, Lanai City, HI 96763, United States

SHA Mexico

SHA’s original location outside Madrid has earned a devoted international following for its signature seven-day health-optimisation programme. In 2024, the brand opened a second clinic in Costa Mujeres, Mexico, which this year introduced stem-cell treatments as part of its new Cellular Regeneration Programme. SHA is among the few health-optimisation clinics to offer allogeneic mesenchymal stem-cell (MSC) and exosome therapies authorised by Mexico’s national health regulator, COFEPRIS. An on-site regenerative medicine physician may recommend and administer the treatments, which are available as an add-on to the resort-clinic’s signature four- or seven-day programmes, incorporating diagnostics, biomarker analysis and personalised nutrition.

SHA Mexico is located at Carr. a Punta Sam 84, 77420 Cancún, Q.R., Mexico

Completed in 1908, Nara Prison was the last of Japan’s ‘Five Great Meiji Prisons,’ a clutch of Western-inspired penitentiaries built to showcase the country’s modernisation and openness to the foreign world. Architect Keijiro Yamashita designed the Romanesque, brick-walled complex, modelling its central detention house on architect John Haviland’s radial prison design: Five cell blocks radiate from a central surveillance station, allowing a few guards to monitor hundreds of prisoners. In 2017, the last inmates were transferred, and the iron gate clanged shut. The complex was designated an Important Cultural Property and slated for transformation into a new luxury retreat.

Less than a decade later, the gate has reopened. The exterior is unchanged, but tucked inside are two new entities: The Hoshinoya Nara Prison Hotel and Nara Prison Museum. While some guests remain apprehensive about sleeping in a former prison, the hotel preserves and elevates the interior architecture without reducing it to a gimmick. Staff, many transferred from other Hoshino properties, are warm and assured; afternoon tea and evening ‘gramophone soirees’ enliven the space. Ultimately, the property positions itself as a turn-of-the-century heritage stay, leaving the prison’s more sombre stories to the museum.

Wallpaper* checks in at Hoshinoya Nara Prison Hotel

What’s on your doorstep?

Nara Prison was built at the north edge of town and is surrounded mostly by residential streets. The main attraction is Nara Prison Museum, and it's worth spending an afternoon learning about the history and current state of Japan's criminal justice system. Hotel guests can slip out a private side door to visit free of charge and enjoy exclusive after-hours access to preserved Cell Block D.

A popular day trip destination from Kyoto, Nara is also home to several UNESCO World Heritage sites. The property is a quick taxi ride from Todai-ji Temple and the 660-hectare Nara Park, where hundreds of sacred deer roam free.

Who is behind the design?

Rie Azuma of Azuma Architect & Associates helmed the transformation from prison to hotel, while Hiroki Hasegawa of Studio Onsite oversaw landscape design.

The property’s heritage designation forced the designers into tight constraints. A ‘before and after’ of the halls reveals the same skylights, whitewashed railings, and steel support beams overhead, though plush pewter carpeting adorned with navy sunburst medallions has been laid, and contemporary layered lighting adds an inviting glow. Throughout public spaces, Azuma preserved as many original architectural elements as possible, from wood plank flooring outside the chapel-turned-lounge to the exposed steel support beams and shorter-than-average interior doors. Art is sparse but thoughtfully chosen to reflect the vibrancy and optimism of early 20th-century Japan. The end design is a careful balance of historic floors, walls, arches, and window frames with a Western-style Art Deco colour palette and furnishings.

The room to book

Each of the 48 long, narrow suites was formed from a strand of either nine, ten, or eleven original cells. The 11-cell deluxe suites are the clear standout, and not only because they're the largest. In addition to spacious dressing rooms with chaise lounges, they include a complimentary mini bar with local spirits, a record player-like CD player with a small music library, local teas and bath salts, and thick-knit wool blend socks made in Nara.

In all rooms, the prison-issue white plaster was carefully removed to expose hand-laid red brick walls. Alternating walls are left raw, covered in warm wood panelling, or hand-brushed in shimmery silver-grey or cerulean paint. The ceilings and windows are high, affording no views beyond treetops and sky. Through those clerestory-like barred windows, framed in new wood, beams of sunlight create a dance of patterns on the walls that change throughout the day. The sum of all these parts? A space resplendent in cosy, cocooning privacy.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Dining at Nara Prison Hotel is limited to breakfast and dinner sets, though the adjacent museum offers a curry bread lunch. As with other Hoshino Resorts, meals follow strict reservation timetables. There are a trio of breakfast sets: Japanese, Meiji-style, and Western, with requisite bounties of seasonal fruit and rice or bread assortments. Return later for the signature Gastronomy Chronicle supper, a light-hearted, French-inspired culinary journey through the 20th century, including a starter with five bites of Western culture to represent the Meiji era, breaded sole in Albert sauce, and, for dessert, fluffy chocolate mousse cake.

​Step outside and walk across the courtyard to indulge in a cocktail, whiskey, or brandy from the Dining Lounge. This former storehouse features a glimmering wall of windows, jewel-toned upholstery, and an old gramophone hand-cranked by staff.

Where to switch off

The hotel has no spa, pool, or fitness centre. The vaulted prison chapel, however, has been transformed into a sumptuous lounge that hosts afternoon tea and an evening fragrance-blending workshop. The left wing, awash in sunlight filtered through translucent windows, offers complimentary drinks and nibbles throughout the day – green tea in the morning, sparkling sake in the evening – along with plush armchairs and chaises. To the right are private alcoves with luxuriously deep sofas. Soaring ceilings buttressed by thick wooden beams, soft rosewood floors, and layered contemporary lighting create an airy, relaxed atmosphere that belies the building’s history.

The lounge beckons year-round, but in pleasant weather, there’s freedom in snagging a chair in the courtyard-like yard between the Dining Lounge and Dining Room. A raised white boardwalk crisscrosses ornamental grasses, leading to tables and chairs set here and there for coffee or a book in the sunshine. It’s difficult to overstate the pleasure of the outdoors when relaxing beneath a barred window once used for solitary confinement.

The verdict

Nara has far more centrally located hotels, including those that offer a more classic Japanese atmosphere, but Hoshinoya Nara Prison Hotel is as distinctive as they come. Beautifully renovated without losing the architecture's original character, and with delightful heritage experiences in a naturally contemplative setting, this hotel makes a great short stay for unwinding after a few days spent exploring Nara or nearby Kyoto.

Hoshinoya Nara Prison is located at 18 Hannyajicho, Nara, 630-8102, Japan

A weekend in the woods – or indeed, any kind of wilderness – has perennial appeal when it entails a stay in a contemporary or vintage cabin. The humble architectural cabin is as romanticised as it is versatile; it may adapt to different terrains, climates and levels of social battery, but its quirky, pared-back allure remains. Here, from a midcentury gem in Sonoma County to an off-grid red hut set in Irish turf and a treetop hideaway swallowed by the Ecuadorian forest, we’ve handpicked ten cabins for design lovers with a discerning eye and a fondness for a good old wooden refuge.

Book ten of the world’s best architect-designed cabin stays

Cedar + Skye, Sea Ranch Living, California, USA

Twenty-five feet separate the floor from the ceiling in Cedar + Skye’s living room – arguably an extravagant gesture in a cabin built for two. Architect Ralph Matheson designed the midcentury home within Sea Ranch, the northern Californian planned community established in the 1960s, and it now belongs to Sea Ranch Living, The Sea Ranch Lodge’s collection of 13 renovated modernist homes. Downstairs, glass walls surround a freestanding wood stove and a kitchen finished with white quartz, Italian appliances and cerulean glass. Meanwhile, the bedroom occupies an open loft, with an en-suite shower, compact workspace and a skylight trained on the treetops and night sky. Stays include access to Sea Ranch’s recreation centres, private beaches and 50-plus miles of hiking trails.

Cedar + Skye is located within Sea Ranch, Sonoma County, California, USA; rates vary by date

Cucu, WestMeath, Ireland

Cucu is the latest addition to Irish company Samsú’s roster of bijou off-grid cabins. An hour from Dublin, the 20 sq m off-grid shelter occupies 350 acres of County Westmeath countryside, its tapered red form punctured by a single circular window. Studio Bucky, led by Irish architect Alexander Buckeridge, oversaw the architecture, merging a compact timber shell with plywood walls, terracotta tiles and copper details. A custom roll-top copper bath calls for rest and relaxation, while a private sauna extends the bathing ritual outside. The analogue kit supplies a cassette player, film camera, journals, dumb phone and local map; there is also a king-sized bed, wood-burning stove and locally roasted coffee.

Cucu is located on the Meath–Westmeath border, Ireland. Rates: from €225

El Hormiguero, Mindo, Ecuador

From the road, El Hormiguero by Añanku Cabins is a charcoal-black triangle half-swallowed by the ferns of Ecuador’s Andean Chocó. Estudio 2850 and Janna Lasso Hadweh positioned the 24 sq m A-frame on nine steel legs, leaving roots and undergrowth undisturbed beneath its blackened timber, metal and glass shell. The roadside flank cleverly comprises the cabin’s services, including a semi-open shower screened by eucalyptus slats, while the south-west façade faces towards Mindo and the mountains beyond. Stairs, tables and partitions shift to accommodate different uses within the compact interior. Upstairs, a ridge skylight opens the bedroom to the sky and funnels daylight down to the lower level when fog settles over the forest. Birdwatching begins on the charred-timber balcony; waterfalls and butterfly farms are nearby, and central Mindo is a seven-minute walk away.

El Hormiguero is located in Mindo, Pichincha, Ecuador; rates vary by date

JR’s Eco Hut, Nangus, Australia

This solid, A-frame wooden structure, designed by Luke Stanley Architects and located in the rolling hills overlooking the bushlands of south-western Australia, resembles the top half of a Swiss chalet, emerging from a gravel bed. A celebration of off-grid living, the eco hut is intended as a place for dropping out and forgetting the rest of the world, a feat facilitated by panoramic views and congenial midcentury élan, thanks to Anthony Hunt Design’s luxuriously minimal treatment of its airy interior. Solar power runs the lights, gas heats the water, and cooking happens outdoors on a Weber barbecue and twin-burner stove. In winter, the wood-fired tub keeps guests outside after dark; in summer, it becomes a plunge pool. In the morning, expect cockatoos returning to roost and a regional-produce breakfast ready to cook.

JR’s Eco Hut is located at 1214 Nangus Rd, Nangus NSW 2722, Australia; rates vary by date

ÖÖD at Sûr Jumigny, France

Sûr Jumigny pairs two mirrored cabins with two rather older neighbours: a 350-year-old wine cellar and a historic dovecote. The Cave cabin has a private terrace above the cellar, while Pigeonnier turns the dovecote’s chalk-white interior into a cold post-sauna shower. Designed and built by Estonian cabin maker ÖÖD House, the structures stand in a wildflower meadow on an old manor estate at the edge of Champagne. Host Godfrey Hill led the interiors and landscape execution, marrying mirrored glass with limestone, long grass and the estate’s 19th-century buildings. Each cabin sleeps two, with a kitchenette, private terrace, sauna and outdoor shower. Naturally, champagne awaits on arrival.

ÖÖD by Sûr Jumigny, 1 Rue du Jeu de Paume, 02160 Jumigny, France; rates from: €220 per night

Pan Treetop Cabins, Finnskogen, Norway

Moominvalley appears to have taken a detour into Finnskogen, leaving three steep, black cabins among the pines. Norwegian architect Espen Surnevik also borrowed from North American A-frames and electricity pylons, raising each 40 sq m structure eight metres above the forest floor on four supports. The cabins occupy the rocky ground lightly and can be removed without leaving a permanent trace. Each sleeps four to six, with heated floors, a kitchen, fireplace and full-height glazing trained on the birch, spruce and pine outside. Elsewhere, reclaimed barn materials frame a hot tub inside the roofless House with Three Walls. Autumn days can be spent hiking, canoeing and tracking elk (or perhaps elves).

Pan Treetop Cabins is located at Gjesåsen, Åsnes, Finnskogen, Norway. Rates from: £407 per night

Scrubby Bay, New Zealand

Scattered across Banks Peninsula, a rocky Pacific headland of muscular ridges, private coves and grassy hills, Annandale’s collection of spacious villas is the work of architect Andrew Patterson of Pattersons. Of the collection, Scrubby Bay comes closest to the ideal of the New Zealand bach: the cedar-clad villa stretches along the beach, with three sea-view suites, an eight-bed bunk room, a deck with a fire pit and an outdoor spa. Arrival, naturally, is effected by helicopter or a panoramic 40-minute drive along cliff-top farm tracks.

Scrubby Bay is located at Pigeon Bay 7583, New Zealand; rates on request

Skyhawk, Vermont, USA

Skyhawk sits in the woods at the foot of Mount Ascutney, with a bike trail tracing the edge of the property. Catherine and VW Fowlkes of Fowlkes Studio redesigned the midcentury cabin as a four-bedroom retreat for eight, opening the upstairs ceiling to create a lofty gathering room. Original wall boards were reused between exposed joists; rubber floors, caged bulkhead lights and custom steel kitchen furniture add a utilitarian note. Bedrooms swap wardrobes for peg rails and open niches, while a former bedroom serves as a timber-lined boot room. Outside, new Accoya cladding is paired with a large deck, where a built-in bench screens the hot tub. There is no TV, but Mount Ascutney makes a strong case for hiking, snowshoeing and skiing.

Skyhawk is located in West Windsor, Vermont, United States. Rates from: $375 per night (two-night minimum)

Vipp Salaca River, Latvia

Vipp Salaca River arrived at its riverside plot one log at a time. The listed fisherman’s house, built in 1876, was dismantled and rebuilt on 180 stones in Salaca National Park, having once served travellers between Riga and Wolmar. Now part of Vipp’s guesthouse portfolio, the 110 sq m cabin has interiors by Julie Cloos Mølsgaard. Dark log walls and a grey-brown ceiling frame a black Vipp V1 kitchen, mirrored fireplace and open living area. Upstairs, the master bedroom – freestanding bathtub included – overlooks the room below; a twin bedroom faces the woods. A separate terrace holds a wood-fired hot tub with panoramic views. The Salaca River Valley is perfect for kayaking, salmon fishing, cross-country skiing, swimming and autumn mushroom hunting.

Vipp Salaca River is located within Salaca National Park, Latvia; rates from: €375 per night (two-night minimum)

Yamanakako 1st, Japan

Two hours from Tokyo beside Lake Yamanaka, Yamanakako 1st forms part of the Sanu 2nd Home’s nationwide network of bookable retreats. Its Bee cabins were designed by Kotaro Anzai of ADX Architects, who combined a mountain-like profile with the structural logic of a honeycomb. Digitally slit cedar bends into curved partitions around the sleeping and work areas, while a floor-to-ceiling window borrows the surrounding woodland as scenery. Domestic timber construction and raised foundations limit disturbance to the site, while vacuum glazing and substantial insulation prepare the cabin for Japan’s humid summers and snow-heavy winters. Each cabin sleeps four, and features a kitchen, workspace and terrace.

Yamanakako 1st is located at Lake Yamanaka, Yamanashi, Japan; sa-nu.com; rates vary by date

Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama has died, aged 97.

Kusama, who came to art later in life, was born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, and began drawing as a child. Her bold, striking dots and nets were her own original way of confronting infinity, repetition and the boundaries of the self.

Yayoi Kusama – the influential artist's life

In 1957, Kusama moved to New York, producing paintings, sculptures, installations, performances and films which later inspired minimalist and Pop Art movements. Her phallic sculptures were controversial, as were the Infinity Mirror Rooms she created in 1965, which transported the viewer into realms of endless space. Her polka dot and pumpkin works became, commercially, massively successful.

Upset at the thought that her work was being copied by male contemporaries, including Andy Warhol, Kusama returned to Japan in 1973. From the late 1970s, she lived voluntarily in a psychiatric hospital while continuing to work in a nearby studio (where her roles included guest editor of Wallpaper* for the October 2023 issue).

Her company confirmed Kusama’s death at a hospital in Tokyo on 14 August 2026. ‘Throughout an extraordinary lifetime devoted entirely to artistic creation, Kusama pursued an internationally acclaimed career as a pioneering avant-garde artist whose creative practice encompassed visual art, performance, fiction, and poetry,’ they said.

‘She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul. We will carry forward Kusama's wishes and, through art, continue to bring hope and strength for the future to people around the world.’

Completed ten years ago by Kengo Kuma & Associates, the Wild Bird Forest Lodge is now for sale through Sotheby’s International Realty Japan. Minimalist in detail but rich in scale and materiality, the 240 sq m villa is arranged as a series of structures on a 0.6-acre site in Nagakura, close to Karuizawa Town in Nagano Prefecture in Honshu.

Explore Kengo Kuma's Wild Bird Forest Lodge

Set in a managed resort close to a nature preserve, the design of the vacation home was designed by Kuma with inspiration taken from the flight paths of wild birds. Dramatic oversailing galvanised steel roofs extend outwards above the living spaces, with exposed timber joists blended with the steel frame.

The enclosed spaces are made from reinforced concrete and steel, with timber clad walls and flooring paired with traditional tatami mats. The accommodation consists of four pavilions, with a two-storey main building housing the main, living and kitchen on the upper level, surrounded by covered terraces.

Below this is a sauna and traditional Japanese bath, the latter with large windows overlooking the surrounding vegetation. The primary bedroom is located in a pavilion adjoining the main building but sharing the same roof structure. From an entrance hall, steps lead down to an expansive bedroom area with its own secluded private terrace.

Two other pavilions are arranged as Japanese style rooms with tatami mat floors, adjoining bathrooms and terraces covered by a substantial mono-pitch roof. The original brief called for a house that was part gallery, part residence and throughout the various spaces, furnishings and artworks were chosen especially for the house – all are included in the sale.

The property is located around 6.5 km from Karuizawa Station on JR’s Hokuriku Shinkansen, around an hour’s journey from Tokyo.

Wild Bird Forest Lodge, Karuizawa Town, Nagano Prefecture, designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates, $10,033,046, SothebysRealty.com

kkaa.co.jp

Vanishing Japan author, architect and occasional Wallpaper* contributor Naomi Pollock has lived and worked in Japan for over three decades. As well as being close to the country’s dynamic and globally inspirational architecture scene, she’s also witnessed firsthand the cavalier approach Japan can have to its recent built heritage. This tome, her newest monograph, is an impressive chronicle of works that were demolished before their time.

There are a host of cultural and practical reasons why architecture appears more intangible in Japan than elsewhere, from the ever-evolving building codes designed to provide a modicum of protection against earthquakes, to the economic bubble of the late 80s that increased architectural variety but not utility, to the inherent love of the new and cultural acceptance of impermanence that shapes the country’s create vigour. 'The acquisition of the latest fashion, food, cars and other consumer goods is an endless and ongoing pursuit in Japan,' Pollock writes, noting that even feted works of architecture have succumbed.

Many of those works are included here, around 90 examples of key buildings demolished in the 21st century. The vast majority of them were built in the decades following the war, although some even date from the 80s and 90s. Vanishing Japan is one of the first published recor1ds of these losses, which include works by some of the most acclaimed architects of recent years, including Arata Isozaki, Kazuyo Sejima, Riken Yamamoto, Fumihiko Maki and Kenzo Tange.

Some works will be familiar, such as Kisho Kurokawa’s seminal Nakagin Capsule Tower, whilst others are more obscure, oftentimes a victim of the Metabolist ethos of interchangeability and modularity.

Naturally Tokyo and Osaka, with their rocketing land prices and constant churn get the most entries, but there are featured buildings from all over Japan, from hotels and office blocks to schools, theatres and city halls. Japanese architecture continues to provide an exemplary template for inventiveness and creativity, from the domestic design scene to major works. Vanishing Japan shows the flipside of this rapid, constant innovation.

'Vanishing Japan: Modern Architecture, Gone But Not Forgotten', Naomi Pollock, £35, ThamesandHudson.com

Hitotomori joins the Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2026 - welcome this young Japanese practice to our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Hitotomori

Hitotomori (a name with a dual meaning in Japanese: either ‘people and forest’ or ‘one light’) is a small Japanese studio founded in 2019 by Yoshiaki Nagasaka. The office is in Nara, at the edge of the Kasuga Primaeval Forest, in a renovated, 140-year-old multipurpose machiya building with a small shop/cafe (run by Nagasaka’s wife), a one-room hotel (run by the studio), and the architectural office of its small team of five people.

Having worked for a large general contractor for almost 30 years, Nagasaka longed for more freedom and ‘the opportunity to pursue more creative work in an environment where I could work closely with friends,’ he explains, describing his reasons for setting up his own practice. ‘This freedom is now the driving force behind my work,’ he continues.

Spanning a wide variety of residential, commercial, and hospitality projects, Nagasaka’s no-frills design approach and clever use of ordinary materials have attracted quite a following, keeping the small studio constantly busy with several projects running simultaneously.

Nagasaka’s main influences are the architecture of Alvar Aalto, the thinking of Louis Kahn (‘Structure is the giver of light’ and ‘Even a common, ordinary brick wants to be something more than it is’), and the work of his friend and fellow architect Taro Tsuruta of Tsuruta Architects in London.

What: House in Asuka

Completed in 2024, the House in Asuka is quintessentially Hitotomori. Designed in about five months and built in six, the compact 65 m² home sits on a corner site in a protected area of the small village of Asuka in Nara Prefecture. It is partly screened from the two roads by a simple wooden fence, above which only the tiled roof, required by local regulations, is visible. Simple concrete steps set in grey gravel lead up to a small landing and the front door.

Inside, the interior is kept simple, with cedar floorboards, lauan doors and bespoke furniture, painted walls, and Hitotomori’s original concrete tiles forming the kitchen splashback. To make the most of the modest 65 m² footprint, Nagasaka has added several small loft spaces, accessible by a staggered staircase in one location and a simple ladder in another. Lighting is provided by one of Nagasaka’s close collaborators, New Light Pottery, with its Mob 26 bracket light used throughout the space.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

hitotomori.net

What happens when Burgundy winemaking meets Japanese brewing traditions? Yukiguma is the answer: a sake that sparks a flavourful cross-cultural conversation, and brings a shot of design to hospitality.

Brewed at the foot of Mount Ikoma in the Osaka Province, Yukiguma was founded by winemaker Nathalie Perrodo. Her approach to wine is innovative, and the same applies to her new sake, which nods to the traditions of Japanese brewing techniques, and uses pure water sourced from the surrounding Ikoma mountains (which makes up around 80 per cent of the sake’s main body).

It was Perrodo’s background in French wine which drew her towards sake, as she tells Wallpaper*: ‘I grew up with a deep respect for terroir, craftsmanship and the idea that what we drink can express both a place and a culture. But what has always fascinated me even more than the drink itself is what happens around it. Some of my happiest memories are of family gathered around a table, where a bottle became the beginning of a conversation, a celebration, or simply a moment shared.

‘Sake had fascinated me for many years because I saw so many parallels with the world of fine wine, yet it remained a completely different discipline for me to explore. With my French-Asian heritage, there was also something deeply personal about bringing these two worlds together.’

Yukiguma is brewed at the Daimon Brewery, which was established in 1826. Located in the ancestral hunting grounds of a Japanese imperial family, the brewery focuses on small-scale production – ideal for Yukiguma’s small batch of only 5,000 bottles produced per year.

Master maker Yasutaka Daimon, oversees the operation. Perrodo and Daimon, both avid travellers with a shared openness to the world, found kinship rooted in their shared values and eye for craftsmanship. Perrodo reflects, ‘Meeting Daimon San in Osaka was the turning point. We shared the same respect for tradition, but also the desire to create something contemporary.’

Yukiguma means ‘snow bear’ and the drink is made with 100 per cent Yamada Nishiki rice from Hyōgo. However, it is the pure spring water from the Ikoma Mountains that adds a special touch. ‘Pure spring water is a rare yet traditional part of Yukiguma's identity. Today, only around 4 per cent of Japanese breweries use spring water, and Daimon Brewery is fortunate to have its own natural spring source in the Kansai region. The water has a neutral yet unique profile, providing a clean foundation that allows the brewery to focus on the fermentation rather than the water imposing a strong flavour of its own,’ explains Perrodo.

It is this neutrality that allows the sake to ferment slowly, as Perrodo continues to explain: ‘Rather than being defined simply as sweet or dry, it’s designed to have a balanced, food-friendly character that can be paired to taste and reflect the diverse culinary traditions of Osaka, Kyoto and Nara.’

As with wine, tasting sake sparks sensory descriptors. Summing up Yukiguma’s flavours, she says: ‘Persimmon describes the softer, ripe fruit quality: subtly honeyed, rounded and gently sweet rather than sharply acidic. Mangosteen captures a more delicate tropical character: floral, lightly creamy and sweet-tart. Lychee communicates the sake’s lifted perfume and fresh, aromatic quality.’

Yukiguma is created to surprise, to encourage discovery. Says Perrodo, ‘It is an opportunity not only to unite two cultures, but to create something that people would remember, not simply for how it tasted, but for the moments it accompanied.’

Yukiguma can be enjoyed neat, over ice, or in a variety of cocktails, including its signature Yuki Blossom:

Yuki Blossom
35ml Suntory Toki Whisky
35ml Yukiguma
10ml Peach liqueur
10ml Muyu Jasmine Verte
10ml Green Tea & Honey Mix
Stir and strain over a clear ice cube in a Metropolitan Rock

Yukiguma is available for purchase for £120 at marlo.wine.com

From English potter Bernard Leach to Japanese creative director NIGO and American artist Theaster Gates: these are some of the creators who resonate with Mingei. Wallpaper* guides you through what underpins Mingei and its enduring relevancy in contemporary society.

What is Mingei?

Mingei did not emerge all of a sudden. It is about recognizing the ‘beauty of utility’ in everyday objects that had long been crafted and used for daily life; these everyday items came to be called Mingei, and the Mingei movement arose to raise awareness and promote their value.

Mingei, an abbreviation for folk crafts in Japanese, is a neologism coined in 1925 by Japanese philosopher Sōetsu Yanagi – who felt empathy towards the ideas of British thinkers John Ruskin and William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement – together with potters Shoji Hamada and Kanjiro Kawai. In the early 20th century, as mass-produced, machine-made items began to spread through life in Japan, Yanagi referred to the simple, practical items created by anonymous artisans - using readily available materials to make useful tools for the people - as 'folk crafts mingei', and recognised in them a wholesome beauty free from ego of artist. The Mingei movement presented a new way of viewing objects and new aesthetic values.

The nine rules of Mingei

So, what are the characteristics that define mingei items? As defined by Yanagi: they need to be practical; they must be made by anonymous craftsmen, rather than by signed artists; they are produced in large quantities for widespread use; they demonstrate skilled craftsmanship honed through the accumulation of labour; as items need to be produced in large numbers, they are made through the division of labour among several artisans; they embody the craft and knowledge passed down from predecessors; they rely on external factors; they reveal the culture of terrain where they are made. Furthermore, they must be affordable so that ordinary people can purchase them. Such objects were produced in the vicinity of people’s daily lives in times when logistics were underdeveloped; naturally mingei items were made throughout Japan and across the world.

A home for Mingei: The Japan Folk Crafts Museum

The Japan Folk Crafts Museum, founded in Tokyo in 1936 by Souetsu Yanagi and others to widely disseminate the concept of mingei and present a new perspective on objects, houses a collection of approximately 17,000 items gathered through the lens of Yanagi. The museum showcases works from Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, represented in the works of ceramics, woodwork, dyed textiles, paintings, metalwork, basketry and stonework, all of which illustrate how folk art arises from everyday life across the globe.

In particular, in Japan – a country stretching long from north to south with climatic differences between regions – lifestyles vary from region to region, and mingei artefacts were created to meet the specific needs of each area. It is also worth noting that many of these traditional crafts still thrive in Japan today. A major factor in this can be attributed to the country’s long-standing policy of national isolation.

From 1639 to 1854 during the Edo period, Japan implemented a policy of national isolation, virtually severing trade and exchange with the rest of the world. By doing so, the ruler sought to limit foreign influence, to make governance of the country easier, and establish a distinct Japanese identity.

Thanks to this policy of minimising foreign influence, industrialisation, which had already begun in the West, was significantly delayed in Japan, for better or for worse. Whereas the UK had pioneered industrialisation in the 18th century, industrialisation had not even begun in Japan. Japan was not yet modernised. Consequently, it can be said that traditional crafts have survived for a long time in Japan.

However, once the Edo period’s policy of national isolation came to an end, the newly established Meiji government rushed to modernise, taking the West as its model, in order to become a modern country. Industrialisation, standardisation and efficiency were essential for modern society. It was against this backdrop of industrialisation in Japan, and mass-produced goods were gradually permeating everyday life, that mingei was coined. In other words, it was an era in which craft was on the transitional stage of being replaced by industry.

The role of Mingei today

Naoto Fukawasa, one of the world’s most influential industrial designers of today and the Director of the Japan Folk Arts Museum, says: ‘I recognise that there is an important relationship between Mingei and design. I do not believe that the role of a contemporary designer is to express oneself, as an artist does. The role of design is to create functional objects that serve everyday life, and design emerges from various factors, such as local materials and local culture. I believe that this approach to design resonates with the spirit that underlies Mingei objects.’

As Fukasawa suggests, many designers, including those from overseas, visit the Museum as a must-see destination in Tokyo, suggesting that there is much to be learnt from Mingei now. ‘Tasks will likely be replaced by technologies such as AI. We can leave the task to AI. However, I believe people are drawn to the uncontrollable elements such as inconsistencies that arise from human hands and cannot be replicated by machines,’ he adds.

Among the museum’s collection, one of Fukasawa’s favourites is a ceramic brazier that fishermen would cradle between their legs whilst on a cold fishing boat. It would be possible to replicate the same object today. However, the thoughtfulness behind the original invention of the brazier - care to keep the body warm whilst at sea - is perhaps something only a human being could have conceived.

The Japan Folk Crafts Museum
4-3-33 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo

I first met Manpei Tsurubayashi, owner, designer, and craftsman of the omnidirectional speaker brand Listude, back in 2018 when I interviewed him for a Wallpaper* Trip story on the city of Nara. He and his wife, Anna Hasegawa, had converted a large sushi restaurant on the outskirts of the city with a listening and event space on the upper floors and a workshop on the ground floor, where Tsurubayashi was building his speakers.

The brand, founded in 2007, was originally called Sonihouse, but changed to Listude (a portmanteau of listen and attitude) in 2021. In 2025, after three years of planning and building, the company moved to a private enclave nestled among tall red pines in Yamanashi. The purpose-built concert-hall-workshop-listening studio and living areas were designed by the couple’s longtime friend Yoshiaki Nagasaka of Hitotomori Architects.

‘I had been delivering speakers to musicians, such as Yuni Mori and Gen Tanabe, and local cafés and restaurants in the area for some time, and really felt there was a good community of musicians, artists and people making great food and wine,’ Tsurubayashi explains as his reason for deciding to move shop from Nara to the small city of Hokuto in Yamanashi. His speakers seem to connect like-minded people, be it musical artists like Mori, or Eishi Okamoto from Beau Paysage winery.

When a local real estate agent showed him the roughly 1,000 sq m plot in 2022, Tsurubayashi decided on the spot that this would be the new home, not just of Listude, but also for his family of four. ‘The site slopes gently, and I had this early vision of using this natural slope to make an outdoor stage for concerts,’ he reminisces. Tsurubayashi also knew he wanted the project to include a large concert hall, outdoor stage and listening room, as well as a production area for his product.

Nagasaka managed to fit all of this into a simple rectangular volume. Two levels are split in the middle by an opening that leads to an outdoor stage with simple bench seating in the adjacent woods. The front part of the building houses the production workshop and offices on the ground floor. A spiral staircase outside leads up to the listening room with its large picture window looking out onto the nearby forest. At the back are the family’s private living quarters.

The entire rear of the building forms a double-height concert hall, open to the forest on two sides. Six Scenery speakers by Listude hang from the ceiling, with wall-mounted sound panels made by Tsurubayashi himself using thick curtain fabric and wooden frames. ‘It’s very hard to find good sound panels in the exact sizes I wanted. And as I studied art, I am pretty good at building canvases,’ he says.

Tsurubayashi hired acoustic specialist Hiroshi Suzuki to reduce electro-magnetic noise in both the sound system in the concert hall and the listening room using two separate circuits; one for machinery, office and living use and the other for the audio equipment in the listening room and concert hall.

Listude has already tested the system with concerts, both inside and outside. The sound, as expected, is crisp and clear like the forest that surrounds the new home of this innovative Japanese speaker brand.

listude.jp

hitotomori.net

Listude’s Scenery series of speakers

A simple, minimalist enclosure surrounds this Osaka house, carefully concealing the richness that unfolds within the new-build home, designed by Apollo Architects & Associates. The project, a family residence set in a sleepy neighbourhood of the Honshu port city, is titled Moment – and explores moments of everyday spatial drama subtly, as befits the Japanese architecture tradition.

Tour this contemporary Osaka house

The clean, blind wall that surrounds the residence allows one of its key architectural features – its timber-lined, 1.8m-deep eaves – to be seen from the outside, hinting that there's more than meets the eye to this seemingly modest Osaka house. Stepping through the garden gates from the street, visitors cross a generous terrace and garden to approach the main home's glazed volume, topped by the slender feature roof.

The architects worked on the home's volume as if it were a gallery – crafting the entrance and the arrangement of lacquerware, woodwork, bonsai, and decorative artworks in a way that nods to an exhibition space. The living areas' double-height interiors also afford a luxurious generosity of space, underlining the same approach.

A central staircase, placed within sight of the main entrance, punctuates the home's more social areas and leads upstairs to a mezzanine library and study area. Beyond it, children's rooms and a guest room are tucked away towards the opposite end of the plan. The primary bedroom is placed on the ground floor, right underneath.

The home was designed to feel just as impressive at night as it is during the day, the architects say: 'At night, carefully arranged lighting accentuates the walnut ceiling boards on the underside of the roof eaves, further articulating the home’s nuanced richness.'

They add: 'A dry garden planted with vintage olive trees and other greenery lines the perimeter of the residence, integrating harmoniously with the modern architecture. Over time, as additional plantings, outdoor furniture, and artwork are gradually introduced, the residence is intended to age gracefully and continue evolving with its inhabitants and their lifestyles.'

apollo-aa.jp

Marc Newson, Philippe Starck, Tom Dixon. These are designers whose names have appeared on furniture brands and countless design media. However, it is no exaggeration to say that Japanese design entrepreneur Teruo Kurosaki, who passed away on 23 March 2026, was the one who gave them a springboard to success on the world stage. He was the founder of the Tokyo-based furniture company Idée. His passing was accompanied by deep sadness among the many designers who’d worked with him. Here, we pay homage to the man who became the custodian of aspiring designers.

Teruo Kurosaki and Idée

Idée was founded in 1982 as a company to create original furniture working with designers from Japan and abroad, aiming to offer a lifestyle rooted in aesthetic sensibility. Over time, the company expanded beyond furniture making to become a lifestyle brand offering a wide range of products – from textiles and plants to music and food – with a mission to encourage adventures into personal interests.

Founder Kurosaki was born in 1949. In the early 1980s, while visiting his younger brother who was studying in London, he encountered antiques. As he looked at Western antiques, he became intrigued by the ideas behind objects that humans had created, wondering, 'Who made these, and with what intentions? What situation were they used in?'

This led him to begin importing Western antiques into Japan, to celebrate the intrinsic value of objects that had been passed down for generations. Kurosaki had an acute eye for aesthetics; he was probably one of the first to introduce midcentury French designer Jean Prouvé’s work to Japan in the 1980s (Prouvé specialist Galerie Patrick Seguin only opened in 1989). Jasper Morrison recalls, ‘I went to Tokyo and I remember meeting [Kurosaki] there for the first time and being impressed that he was showing products of Jean Prouvé and Serge Mouille.’

Idée was founded not only to deal in vintage items, but also with the aspiration to create living environments that would inspire Japanese people to aspire to such a lifestyle, leading to the launch of Idée’s original furniture production. For this reason, Idée had its own workshop from the start, handling production from woodworking and metalwork to electrical work. Its staff formed a community much like the guild craftsmen of the Middle Ages. Its initial furniture was based on European furniture – Thonet’s bentwood chairs or Eileen Gray’s art deco screens.

Marc Newsom and Idée

A decisive moment for Idée, and probably for the design scene in Japan, came in the mid-1980s, when Australian designer Marc Newson, fresh out of art school in Sydney came across Kurosaki. ‘I first met Teruo Kurosaki quite serendipitously. It was the result of an extraordinary (quite literal) crossing of paths in Tokyo in the 1980s when I was in my early twenties. Kurosaki fast became a wonderfully generous mentor, and my very first patron (my only, in truth). A critical part of this support came from how he set me up at Idée. Despite sharing the space with Idée’s employees, I was encouraged to work on and develop my own designs,’ Newson tells Wallpaper*.

At the time, there were many builders’ stores in Tokyo that dealt with lamp fittings, which excited Newson, who gathered components from these suppliers and assembled lighting fixtures to create the ‘Super Guppy’ lamp in Idée’s workshop.

Probably the most recognised of Newson’s designs made at Idée is the ‘Embryo’ chair. Kurosaki asked for the help of a surfing wetsuit manufacturer in Zushi, Kanagawa, using neoprene to realise the distinctive form of Newson’s design.

‘Kurosaki also helped me organise my living accommodation, at times at apartments he owned. His support was sincere and all-encompassing – that of a true friend – affording me the time and space to progress in the field. With him, Tokyo was a city where the future somehow felt present and vital. He was a man who took great pleasure in championing other designers and loved forging connections between those he admired. For me, Kurosaki simply embodied Japan,’ continues Newson.

Making Aoyama, Tokyo, the epicentre of design

‘I started a furniture business without any furniture background. So I didn’t know the rules or the business model in making furniture,’ Kurosaki once said. Maybe because of this, he was willing to risk producing adventurous designs, while other furniture company owners with history might think harder about the practicality and viability of the design.

When Idée opened a four-storey shop in Aoyama in 1995, the neighborhood began to transform into a 'Design Block'. Cassina also opened a showroom in the district in 1997, and other international furniture brands followed suit, both in Aoyama and Omotesando.

After seeing London Designers Block, Kurosaki envisioned Tokyo becoming a city of design. In 1999, he organised Tokyo Designers Block, a series of simultaneous design exhibitions held at local shops. Involving embassies from various countries, this event – which continued until 2005 – introduced to the city the work of designers from around the world, including Sweden, the UK, and France, and was likely the first initiative to proclaim to the world that Tokyo was an epicentre of design.

Kurosaki himself later exited Idée, which is now under the umbrella of Ryohinkeikaku, the firm behind Muji. However, rather than limiting itself to furniture, the Idée shop – which, as early as 1997, featured curated books, music, a florist, and even a coffee stand – significantly broadened the definition of design, and it was precisely this that allowed it to touch the lives of so many people. It could be said to have pioneered the trend, now commonplace at Milan Design Week, of technology and hospitality companies exhibiting alongside furniture brands.

Kyoto is not short of beautiful hotels, but Four Seasons Hotel Kyoto has one thing most of them do not: an 800-year-old pond garden at its centre. At the foot of Higashiyama Mountain in the ancient capital’s temple district, the hotel feels like an idyllic paradise arranged around Shakusui-en: a heritage garden believed to date back to the late Heian period. With 180 rooms, including 13 suites and 57 residential suites, two restaurants, two lounges, a spa and wellness centre and a leather-clad Hermès rickshaw in its lobby, this is a property that makes staying in feel as compelling as going out.

Wallpaper* checks in at Four Seasons Kyoto

What’s on your doorstep?

Higashiyama might be Kyoto at its most atmospheric: narrow alleyways, traditional machiya houses, temples, shrines, small artisanal shops. Kyoto Station is about ten minutes away, making arrivals easy, while the surrounding district places guests close to some of the city’s most rewarding cultural sites, such as the Kyoto National Museum or Kiomizu-dera temple. That said, the hotel has a habit of slowing plans down. Between its garden, tea house, terrace overlooking the koi pond, and weekly maiko (traditional apprentice geisha) live performances in its lobby, leaving requires a surprising amount of discipline.

Who is behind the design?

Kyoto’s Four Seasons Hotel is an exercise in understated luxury, steeped in tradition yet thoroughly modern. The architectural blueprint was developed by Japanese studio Kume Sekkei, while global interior design firm Hirsch Bedner Associates (HBA) led the interiors for the guest rooms, spa and public spaces.

The sense of arrival is particularly strong: the porte-cochère, designed by Jun Mitsui & Associates, takes its cue from traditional Japanese umbrellas, with washi paper and glass used to soften the threshold between city and hotel. Indoors, HBA overlooked nothing, with grandeur in spades: quadruple-height ceilings in the dining room; a leather-clad Hermès rickshaw in a hallway corner; and cushions woven by Hosoo, a Kyoto atelier that dates from 1688.

Among the hotel’s expansive art collection, highlights include Seven Stones by Tokyo-born sculptor Todo, made using rocks collected from the hotel’s pond garden, and Zen by Ofune Makoto, a large blue work inspired by the temple district, shifting seasons and Kyoto’s meditative calm.

The room to book

Rooms and suites are designed around the Japanese idea of kutsurogi, or relaxation, and the best of them look directly onto either the city or the garden. Even the more contemporary spaces feel rooted in Kyoto through their use of washi-paper lighting, soft screens, warm wood and calm, restrained palettes. The garden-facing rooms are the ones to book, if possible: waking up to Shakusui-en is an experience in itself. The residential suites are a particular hot commodity for longer stays or families, offering the scale and privacy of an apartment with the service of a hotel.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Designed by Yamamoto Atelier, the teahouse in the garden, also known as Fuju Lounge, is used for meditative tea ceremonies by day, but come twilight, it turns into a swanky bar serving fine sakes – including one produced exclusively for Four Seasons – and premium Champagne. The perfect pre-prandial stopover before heading to Sushi Ginza Onodera Sushi, the 10-seater restaurant that serves Edo- (Tokyo-) style sushi from chef Takuya Kubo, or Kyoto Grill, the brasserie-style restaurant serving breakfast, afternoon tea and dinner, with charcoal-grilled meats, dry-aged cuts and seafood among its signatures

Where to switch off

The spa is one of the largest wellness areas in Kyoto, where facilities include a 20-metre indoor pool, Japanese ofuro baths, sauna, steam room, whirlpool, relaxation lounge and 24-hour fitness centre, alongside seven treatment rooms. Treatments draw on Kyoto traditions and seasonal ingredients. The Heian Tradition ceremony uses matcha, bamboo charcoal salt, camellia oil, rice milk, honey compresses, a sake bath and hot stones, while the Zen Ceremony focuses on full-body massage, ginger-infused hot towels and, in the longer version, another sake bath. There are also Sodashi treatments for jet lag and detox, alongside facials using Kotoshina, Biologique Recherche and Tatcha.

The verdict

Four Seasons Hotel Kyoto works because it understands that the garden is not a backdrop, but the point. The rooms are elegant, the food is strong, the spa is genuinely worth setting time aside for, and the location places guests inside one of Kyoto’s most atmospheric districts. But it is Shakusui-en that gives the hotel its character: koi in the pond, seasonal blossom, a glass bridge over ancient stonework, a tea house looking back towards the 12th century. Kyoto's beauty and history is unusually easy to take all at once.

Four Seasons Hotel Kyoto is located at 445-3 Myohoin Maekawacho, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto, 605-0932, Japan

Fans of the eco-conscious 1 Hotel chain will now have yet another reason for visiting Japan, with the latest addition to the brand’s portfolio in Tokyo’s Akasaka neighbourhood. Featuring 211 rooms, including 24 suites and three penthouse suites, a gorgeous pool and hammam, a dedicated gin bar and delicious Mediterranean-inspired cuisine, guests might find it hard to actually leave and go explore the city, though.

Wallpaper* checks in at 1 Hotel Tokyo, Japan

What's on your doorstep?

Located right in the heart of the city, 1 Hotel is within walking distance of fun-loving Roppongi, shopping in Azabudai Hills and a 20min stroll to the Imperial Palace Gardens, but with the pool, Hamman, excellent coffee at the Neighbors coffee shop adjacent to the reception, you might find it hard to leave the hotel altogether.

Who is behind the design?

Housed on the upper floors of the Akasaka Trust Tower, the interior design has been put in the very capable hands of Jun Aizaki of Crème. A stunning stone wall at the entrance on the ground floor sets the tone of the natural and eclectic palette of materials used throughout the space; distinctly Japanese Oya stone, reclaimed wood, handblown glass and hemp cord lamps. With a carefully selected variety of lamps and bespoke furniture, the design never gets repetitive, and there is a clear reference to the local setting (moss, bonsai, earthen walls) without the design being overly Japanese.

The room to book

Even the standard rooms feel spacious and inviting with ample use of subdued colours, wooden furniture and carefully selected lighting fixtures. The rawness of, for instance, the rough edges of the bathroom vanity, marble counters, reclaimed wood furniture and wood panelling adds an honesty to the sophisticated design that renders the rooms very cosy.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

The hotel’s main dining room, NiNi (a name meaning ‘two-two’ in Japanese), takes its inspiration from Mediterranean cuisine, while making abundant use of local Japanese ingredients, and is headed by Nikko Policarpio. Dinner offers fresh seafood dishes such as botan shrimp carpaccio, hamaguri clams (served with cucumber mignonette, yuzu kosho and olive oil Caviar), roasted scallops, homemade pasta (the zucchini ravioli being our favourite), simple charcoal grilled meat dishes (including chicken confit from Iwate Prefecture, pork chop from Yamagata and Tajima Wagyu) and a selection of vegetable side dishes.

Breakfast is the perfect blend of made-to-order mains (perfectly cooked omelettes, mushroom tartines, waffles, French toast, etc) and a carefully selected, but not overly complicated buffet.

Where to switch off

Guests can indulge in various treatments and massages (including hard-to-find in Tokyo couples massages) at The Bamford Wellness Spa, and are also given free use of the small but gorgeous pool and adjacent Hamman steam rooms.

The verdict

We love the stylish, honest and natural design throughout the hotel. Dining at NiNi is a treat, and with a well-selected wine and impressive non-alcoholic selection too, a new favourite addition to Tokyo’s vibrant dining scene. The rooms come with a well-stocked minibar and the pool and Hammam onsite, and delicious coffee at the hotel’s own coffee bar Neighbors, makes it hard to actually leave the hotel.

Book 1 Hotel Tokyo, 2 Chome-17-22 Akasaka, Minato City, Tokyo 107-0052, Japan. Rates from $550

Lest you forget, Toyota’s origins lie in industrial weaving and textile manufacture. The company was built around Sakichi Toyoda’s automatic loom, invented in 1924, and it wasn’t until 1933 that the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works set up an automobile division. Toyota is now the largest auto maker in the world, a position it has held since 2008, innovating in both automotive and production technology.

In recent years, despite its early dominance of the hybrid car market (Toyota had sold over 15 million hybrids by the turn of this decade), the company has been a little lacklustre when it comes to committing to EVs.

Nevertheless, it hasn’t stopped turning out conceptual mobility visions, with urban areas a special consideration. From the tiny Toyota Land Hopper revealed at the 2023 Japan Mobility Show to the playful Kids Mobi concept shown two years later, Toyota seems committed to re-shaping the world of personal transport.

So where better to explore the interaction between next-generation mobility and people than in your own test laboratory? Woven City is a purpose-designed community in Japan’s Shizuoka prefecture, located close to Mount Fuji.

Described by the company as ‘a real-world test course for mobility innovation’, the ultimate aim is for this modest complex to serve as a place where Toyota’s experiments in mobility, autonomy, robotics and AI can be tried out in a full scale ‘live’ environment.

Comprising of clusters of offices and apartments on a triangular plot, Woven City is now in its initial phase. The idea for the complex stems from Toyota’s planned transition from a conventional car maker into an all-encompassing mobility company, a move it announced back in 2018.

The Woven City complex was unveiled at CES Las Vegas in 2020. The site was once home to the Toyota Motor East Japan Higashi-Fuji plant, once home to production of the first Toyota Century, the company’s enduring flagship (soon to become a more standalone entity). Today, it is overseen by a dedicated sub-company, Woven by Toyota.

Residents will be known as Weavers, while workers from Toyota and partner companies, startups and entrepreneurs will live and work alongside each other, part of a process known as kakezan, or multiplication, here meaning ‘the successful collaboration of diverse industries and individuals.’

Phase one began last Autumn, with 50 households currently occupied out of a total of around 300. Next up is the Inventor Garage, a hub/incubator space that Toyota hopes will be a cradle for next generation products, services and collaborations.

Right now, you can ride on the e-Palette autonomous micro bus,or see the diminutive Guide Mobi shifting goods. This ‘medium-sized, mid-speed autonomous transport robot’ is the modern equivalent of a mule, with the idea that autonomous systems will eventually co-exist with conventional road traffic and pedestrians.

Of course, the name Woven City is also closely linked to Toyota’s heritage - the company maintains working looms in the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology.

As the population of Woven City increases, Toyota hopes to catalyse innovation across four key areas - People, Goods, Information and Energy – with formal and informal partnerships taking technology into new and innovative directions.

Ultimately, Woven City will be the contemporary equivalent of a massive loom, knitting together various strands of today’s technological innovations into a cohesive whole.

Woven.Toyota

Late Japanese film director Yasujirō Ozu was a master at bringing the heart of Japanese life to the screen. His films – Late Spring (1949), Tokyo Story (1953), An Autumn Afternoon (1962) – were often reflections of his own life and daily surroundings. Now, visitors can step into his cinematic universe by staying in the filmmaker’s former home.

A stay at the house that inspired a master of Japanese cinema

Located north of Kamakura in Kanagawa Prefecture – one of Japan’s most popular tourist destinations – the house sits in Kita-Kamakura, along the road leading to Jōchi-ji Temple. A tunnel carved into the mountainside, just wide enough for a person to pass through, leads to the other side of the hill. Following the road uphill, visitors arrive at the 100-year-old house where Ozu lived with his mother from 1952 until his death in 1963.

After Ozu’s passing, the Ogura family – the landowners who lived at the foot of the hill and had been neighbours of the director – inherited the property. Wanting to allow the public to experience Ozu’s world, the family preserved many of the original fittings and renovated the house while retaining as much of its atmosphere as possible. In June, they registered the property on Airbnb as a guesthouse where visitors can stay overnight.

Set on a sloping plot of approximately 900 square metres, the property comprises a 120-square-metre main house built from hinoki cypress and cedar, topped by a curved tiled roof, alongside an 80-square-metre annex. Both structures are elevated on stone footings and constructed using traditional Japanese carpentry techniques. The renovation was carried out by a carpenter specialising in the restoration of temples and shrines in the neighbouring Kamakura area.

Upon opening the sliding entrance door, guests are immediately greeted by a tatami-mat tea room – an arrangement rarely found in traditional Japanese houses. Typically, an entrance opens into a foyer, leading towards the living room where the family spends most of its time, while the tea room is usually located in the deepest part of the house.

‘It seems that Ozu, as a film director, enjoyed welcoming many colleagues and guests to this house, first offering them tea as a gesture of hospitality,’ says Yoshiki Ogura of Hinomoto Japan, the company responsible for managing the Ozu Residence. The tea room functioned almost like an antechamber.

Beyond it, a cedar-clad wooden walkway runs like a cloister around the living room. This was the space where Ozu spent most of his time. Typical of traditional Japanese houses, the structure relies on a framework of columns and beams rather than solid exterior walls and is enclosed by sliding glass doors. With its generous openings, the living room enjoys sweeping views of the surrounding mountain ridges.

‘Ozu used to work on his films here while gazing at the scenery outside,’ says Ogura. It is said that he often opened the glass doors and spent time relaxing with his mother on the veranda, enjoying the view.

The plastered walls and many other finishes remain from the original period. While the tatami mats and shoji screens had deteriorated significantly and required replacement by craftsmen from Kamakura, much of the house retains its original character. The sofa and zelkova wood table in the living room are contemporary pieces crafted by Hinomoto Japan.

A wooden-floored corridor winds around the living room, revealing thoughtful details such as a small window in the partition wall that offers glimpses into the central space. The main house is organised around the living room, with two bedrooms – renovated to suit modern standards of comfort while retaining their original functions – alongside a kitchen, bathroom and toilet. This arrangement allows guests to experience the house much as Ozu once did.

The kitchen has been fitted with modern cooking equipment and updated to accommodate a wide range of culinary needs. Guests can either prepare meals themselves using local ingredients or arrange for a private chef to cook on the premises.

Traces of traditional Japanese architectural design remain throughout, including shitajii-mado – slatted windows commonly found in tea rooms that allow soft light to enter – and lantern-like pendant lights suspended beneath the eaves. Ozu was known for insisting on authenticity in his films, from the tableware and furniture to the paintings on the walls. Even the tonkatsu featured in his films was reportedly sourced from his favourite restaurant in Tokyo. As a result, his home reflected his personal tastes. He occasionally used vases and tableware from the house as props, and some of these objects still remain today.

Meanwhile, a new open-air rotenburo bath made entirely of cypress has been built on a slight rise a short distance from the main house, accessible via a series of stepping stones. Opening the sliding doors reveals panoramic mountain views. Surrounded by forest, with only the Ogura family living below, guests can leave the doors open at night and gaze at the moon while soaking in the bath.

With squirrels and other wildlife as neighbours, the property offers a rare sense of immersion in nature. It is a special place where visitors can feel as though they have stepped back in time to the era when Ozu himself lived here.

airbnb.co.uk

Light filters softly into the stone entrance of an old Kyoto townhouse where Michael Anastassiades stands in front of his new creation: five thin glass tubes rise from a narrow wood base, their illuminated filaments forming a circle – just like the sun above the horizon.

'Light is the base of everything,' says Anastassiades, the Cypriot-born, London-based designer. 'Everything starts from a glow. It’s the first thing I think about before I make or design. It's always the starting point.'

This philosophy shapes 'From Warm Yellow to Saturated Red', Anastassiades’ exhibition at Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto, where his new works – lighting, sculptural objects, seating – are harmonised with the stillness of a 150-year-old machiya, or townhouse.

Sunset – the fleeting intensity of its scattered light, the precision of its deepening shades – is the creative inspiration behind his first solo exhibition in Kyoto. Anastassiades’ objects glow quietly in a play of light and shadows inside the traditional interior – among tatami-lined spaces, paper screens, textured soil walls, high timber rafters, an old storehouse and courtyard gardens framing patches of sky.

Elemental, light and pared-back in form, his works balance precision with poetry, through a mix of cultural influences – Japanese bamboo, Greek island stones, Icelandic fishing knots, Egyptian stools, Cypriot textiles.

A key protagonist in the exhibition is his series of ‘Sunset’ lamps. The first, with a fully lit ‘sun’, is positioned in the stone entrance – and as the exhibition deepens inside the machiya, the 'sun' in each work is positioned a little lower, mirroring its descent into the horizon.

Dynamic vertical lights are also crafted from Japanese bamboo, knotted with linen thread used by Icelandic fishermen; alongside two triangular wood stools with clean curves and pointed edges; and hand-patinated bronze objects, from thorns to stones, laid on handwoven textiles by Cypriot artist Joanna Louca.

The exhibition marks something of a new creative chapter for Anastassiades, opening shortly after he announced plans to close his eponymous lighting brand after nearly 20 years, to focus more deeply on creative projects.

Here, Anastassiades shares his thoughts on sunsets and stones, fishermen’s knots and filters, while taking Wallpaper* on a private tour of his new exhibition.

Michael Anastassiades in Kyoto: interview

W*: Tell me about the sun.

MA: This exhibition is about a very specific time of day, when the sun is setting. Interesting, intense moments. I’ve made a series of sunset light pieces. This one at the entrance is a whole circle of lights – and as you progress through the gallery spaces, the light goes down to the middle of the horizon, like the sun setting. The lights are super-thin – maybe 4mm with a very, very fine LED. These are one-off pieces. To me, these objects are sketches. Drawings. Improvisations.

W*: Standing inside the machiya entrance, I can see a row of stones in a tatami space. Tell me about these.

MA: I’ve always been fascinated with natural stones. These are 25 bronze casts from my collection of stones, which I’ve collected since I was a teenager. I have a huge collection of stones. These are from the Greek island of Kefalonia. I collected them when I was 20 or 21, from a cove in a special bay. I revisited that bay 30 years later – I asked a fisherman to take me to this cove. There were probably 30 different coves, but we got there – and found more stones.

W*: Why stones – and why casts?

MA: These are not the found objects: it’s the whole idea of creating something. I’m fascinated with the role of nature as a designer. They look almost perfectly spherical, like eggs. They were found that way. It’s the idea that nature is able to create this perfect shape.

W*: What about this ‘Bamboo’ light upstairs?

MA: I used Japanese bamboo and black linen thread with a knotting technique used by Icelandic fishermen, holding the metal brackets. The bulbs are the only technological bit. For my brand, I have a lamp called ‘Take’, made of bamboo. It’s interesting to see the evolution here: the other one is very much an industrial product – but this has a handmade feel. The cables on the floor are part of the piece.

W*: What inspires the verticality in your work?

MA: It is part of the language that I’ve used for a very long time. I have been completely fascinated with linear sources of light, ever since the first pieces I made commercially – the ‘Tube’ chandelier. That was very much based on the incandescent bulb. Of course, many people used this in the past, especially the famous Eileen Gray [for her] floor lamp – I was fascinated with these bulbs for a long time. And then, as soon as I started using them, they stopped making them. About 15 years down the line, I decided to make my own bulbs – so I had these made specifically.

W*: There’s such a softness in the light.

MA: The temperature, the colour – everything about it is so carefully chosen. It is not a random piece. It is very much a warm light. The glow is so fundamental, as part of the design of the fixture. It can completely transform how something is perceived.

W*: Why lights – what’s the seed of your desire to express light?

MA: I think we’re all drawn to light in some way or another. I’ve been attracted to light for a very long time. It’s part of the human instinct. From very early civilisations, people worshipped glowing things – the sun, the moon, meteorites, fire. Why did I decide to focus on light? Because I decided I needed to focus on something when I started my brand. I found myself making more and more lights and then eventually working with companies, especially Flos.

W*: In this space, the lights feel almost sacred.

MA: They are meditative objects for sure. If you put things in a certain brightness, you have to be really sensitive with how you want things to be seen. In this context, the house, it had to be this way, it could not be different. Even the choice of materials and selections – it’s all designed around these intimate spaces.

W*: Tell me about the stools.

MA: They’re made from Oregon pine – it’s the first time I’ve used this material. I made three stools before with the same scale, using basalt, so they had a very different energy. I thought wood would be more suitable for this house.

W*: Such clean curves and points. Why this shape?

MA: I’m very much inspired by Egyptian stools, where the corners are elevated, although they’re normally square. This is triangular because I wanted to make a dialogue with the two bronze ‘Thorn’ pieces, on the walls. The stools are quite welcoming, even though they have a presence that says don’t sit.

W*: And another ‘Sunset’ lamp in an alcove?

MA: Here, the sun is almost disappearing – the time between the bottom of the sun touching the horizon and the sun disappearing. All these sunsets are familiar in a sense. We have all watched so many sunsets. Somehow, you can relate to them.

W*: Tell me about the bamboo light screen in the kura storehouse.

MA: To me, it is about filter. The sensation of when something catches your eye without necessarily looking at it directly – from the tip of your eye, you catch a movement. This is what these screens are for me. They are filtering this idea, this play of light, this linear thing that we pass through. This light is part of a series of two screens, designed for this space. It just fitted.

W*: Do you see the sun as a metaphor?

MA: To me, it’s not really a metaphor: it is something that no matter how many times you see it or experience it, every time is unique. Plus it is responsible for how we experience life, the way we experience light.

W*: Was the exhibition inspired by a particular sunset moment?

MA: Not one particular sunset. You know, when you work so much, it is so rare when you can catch the light, catch the sunset. In recent years, I’ve been going to a small Greek island between Rhodes and Cyprus. Now I’m building a house to spend more time there. It’s a place where I can pause. Every evening, we go on hikes up on the rocks on the mountain, not very high – there is one spot which is an incredible place to watch the sunset.

W*: And how about your relationship with Japan?

MA: The first time I came here was 1991. I was a student at the Royal College [of Art]. I didn’t want to come as a tourist so I applied for an internship and came here in the summer, to Tokyo, to work for Toshiba. I spent three months here – it was fascinating, a very different Japan. I next came back 25 years later, with Flos.

W*: Has Japan left an imprint in you creatively?

MA: As a creative, as an artist, when you commit to something, it completely changes the result in your approach to your creative process. That level of commitment – I don’t think you can experience it in any other country.

W*: How do you feel about the light in Japan? Particularly Kyoto, where light is often filtered by paper and nature.

MA: I’m shocked at how soft the light is here at the moment. The humidity makes the light softer at this time of year. The light in the summer in Cyprus flattens everything out. In the Greek islands, it’s the same. In London too, the sun is very different. Coming here suddenly – the way you experience the sun, the light, is different.

W*: And how do you feel about your show opening now in Kyoto?

MA: This is the longest time I’ve spent in Japan. This is an important time for me. I wouldn’t have chosen a different moment. In this context especially, this is perfect.

'From Warm Yellow to Saturated Red' by Michael Anastassiades, at Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto, until 4 July 2026

'I have a strong desire to escape from the forces of gravitation, to free myself from gravity and float free': these words shine a light on the essence of Shiro Kuramata. Playful and poetic, radical and innovative, Kuramata was a pivotal figure in 20th-century Japanese design – and continues to leave an imprint, with lingering traces of his furniture, objects and interior spaces exploring notions of materiality, lightness and perception.

Shiro Kuramata's unique vision

From iconic chairs, lighting, vases and perfume bottles to legendary bar spaces, restaurants and retail interiors, Kuramata’s singular vision shaped decades of creative output in Japan’s seminal post-war period, blending traditional Japanese aesthetic concepts with modernist expression.

Typically defined by a sense of impermanence, a playful experimentation and a dematerialisation of form – expressed in curves, geometry, colour – his work captured a precise moment in time that was never meant to last (today, 35 years after his death, very few of his interiors still exist – as he anticipated).

Acrylic resin, glass, steel mesh, aluminium: industrial material experimentation was a key thread, with Kuramata’s surreal and sculptural objects often defying spatial physicality, instead embodying a visual sense of lightness and emptiness, in his pursuit of freedom.

Or, in his own words: 'I continue to hold onto the naïve hope that only when we are freed from conventions, established concepts and ideals, and all kinds of constructs that have long been attached to this earth, will we be able to gain freedom in the true sense of the word.'

Shiro Kuramata: life in design

Born in Tokyo in 1934 as the youngest of six siblings, Kuramata’s earliest visual landscape was shaped by an upbringing in company housing at RIKEN (the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research), where his father worked.

As the Second World War unfolded, Kuramata moved between stints in bomb-blitzed Tokyo, Yokohama and rural Shizuoka Prefecture, while also discovering an early love of carpentry (his father reportedly gifted him children’s carpentry tools on his eighth birthday).

After high school, Kuramata joined the design department of a furniture factory before studying for a year at the Living Design Department of the newly created Kuwasawa Design School. A new building under construction at an intersection in Ginza then caught his eye – leading to his involvement creating interior elements for San-ai Dream Center, a progressive urban retail and leisure complex by architect Shoji Hayashi, completed in 1963.

Two years later, Kuramata, then aged 31, established his own design practice Kuramata Design Office in Tokyo – a move that catalysed the freedom for him to explore decades of radical experimentation, through furniture, objects and spaces.

Within a few years, Kuramata unveiled his Furniture with Drawers series – a layered structural composition balancing functional precision with a surrealist touch. The project, self-initiated without a client commission, was featured in a Danish magazine, marking his overseas debut. 'I am interested in furniture that is not intended to be used, but simply happens to manifest as furniture,' he said.

Key projects

Imbued with the energy of Japan's fast-paced post-war recovery, Kuramata went on to design his first architectural project in 1967: the HQ of fashion company Edward’s in Tokyo, where floor-to-ceiling light pillars consolidated the increasingly elemental role of light in his spatial vision. His iconic 1972 K-series Oba-Q Lamps followed, created using heated acrylic, draped like fabric, resulting in luminous, hovering white ghost-like forms.

It’s perhaps little surprise that Kuramata shared a deep creative synergy with fellow visionary Issey Miyake. A decades-long partnership unfolded when Kuramata designed his first retail space for Miyake inside the innovative From 1st complex in Minami-Aoyama in 1976.

A clean minimalist backdrop with playful pops of luminous fluorescent lighting, the new store not only radically disrupted conventional notions of formulaic shop interiors, it was a spatial expression of the spirit of the clothing itself, fusing purity and lightness with a timeless touch of futurism.

As Kuramata continued to design countless restaurants, bars and retail spaces, his experimentations in materials such as acrylic metal mesh deepened – reflecting his growing interest in material expressions of transparency and light, perceptions and illusions.

Shiro Kuramata chairs

It was in 1976 that Kuramata conceived The Glass Chair – with six structural plates of glass created without screws, using a newly developed UV-curing photopolymer adhesive – resulting in a chair imbued with an ethereal sense of immateriality.

One celebrated creation is How High the Moon, a chair designed in 1986 which appears to be comprised mainly of air – its clean-lined form outlined in near-invisible industrial mesh, evoking a poetic sense of weightlessness, transparency and illusion.

The Miss Blanche chair – unveiled in 1988, just three years before his death – is another masterful expression of lightness, perception and impermanence, with its clear acrylic resin form peppered with a frozen scattering of artificial red roses.

Shiro Kuramata and Memphis

Another key force for Kuramata was his creative synergy with Italian designer Ettore Sottsass. Aligned in their postmodern expressions of bold colour and geometric form, Kuramata became a founding member of Sottsass’ seminal Memphis project in 1981 – consolidating his visibility and reputation in the international design world.

Kuramata’s death in February 1991 at the age of 56 due to heart failure was as sudden as it was premature. Since then, just as he anticipated, his immaterial creative output has almost completely vanished.

Legacy

Among the few interiors by Kuramata still intact today is Comblé, a 1988 cocktail bar in Shizuoka city. Here, hidden in the first floor of an otherwise nondescript building is a time capsule of Kuramata’s designs: geometric lines, a vivid red aluminium wall panel, a curved counter in yellow fibre reinforced polymer and terrazzo flooring with light-emitting diodes.

Kuramata lovers can also make a pilgrimage to Hong Kong, where Kiyotomo Sushi Bar, completed in Tokyo in 1988, lives on at M+ Museum – after the entire structure was dismantled, shipped and reconstructed in its new home.

Meanwhile, select furniture and lighting designs continue with a limited number of manufacturers, including Cappellini, whose output includes his 1970 rotating storage unit Revolving Cabinet and the iconic Miss Blanche chair; and Vitra, which produces How High the Moon chair.

For Kuramata, his diminished material presence in the world today would most likely come as little surprise, with his creative output rooted in the fleeting, immaterial and impermanent – yet his radical imprint on the design world is here to stay.

Utsuroi. This Japanese word evokes the subtle passing of time – the changing of seasons, a shift in emotions, a transition from one state to another.

It also captures the spirit of 'Utsuroi Hymn', an exhibition shaped by an innovative collaboration between Ryosokuin, a 14th-century Zen temple in Kyoto, and Mae Engelgeer, a Dutch textile artist and designer known for her nuanced colours and poetry of form.

This is the latest in a string of Japan-based projects for Engelgeer, who relocated from Amsterdam to Kyoto in 2023 and works with makers ranging from longtime collaborator Hosoo, the kimono textile company, to furniture maker Karimoku.

For 'Utsuroi Hymn', Toryo Ito, Ryosokuin’s progressive deputy head priest, gave Engelgeer unusual freedom to access the temple’s centuries-old textile archive (filled with monk robes, materials for Buddhist rituals, gifted treasures) – and reinterpret them into contemporary artworks.

The end result is a series of objects – intuitive, subtle, nuanced – currently exhibited across the temple’s tatami spaces, alcoves and teahouse. Faded edges, inner linings, layered fragments, paper wrappings: Engelgeer focuses on the beauty of lesser-seen elements. Three hanging works – echoing traditional kakejiku scrolls – subtly layer time-etched tones into a soft geometry, lightly framed in cedar.

Capturing light on tatami are also two folding byobu screens, with collage-like layers and traces of patterns in silk and hemp, plus minimal yellow lines on a blush pink textile – an example of Engelgeer’s quiet yet connective interventions. Textiles were also cut into threads, before being woven into rug-like shapes mirroring the paper wrappings that contain the archive’s textiles.

'Traditionally, when temple textiles became damaged, they were resized and transformed into smaller utilitarian objects,' Ito tells Wallpaper*. 'In this project, however, we approached the archive artistically, allowing both preservation and new life to coexist through a series of works.'

He adds: 'A quiet sense of luxury emerges through the layering of subtle and almost imperceptible elements. There are still countless treasures sleeping quietly in Kyoto, throughout Japan, and across the world. I hope this project becomes a small stone that awakens them.'

Utsuroi Hymn is on view until 12 July 2026, Ryosokuin Zen Temple, Kyoto

Mae Engelgeer on working in Japan

For Engelgeer, Japan is a source of rich inspiration, with her work appearing in a growing number of projects – from the Dutch Pavilion at last year’s Osaka Expo to the noren entrance curtains at newly opened Capella Kyoto.

Here, Engelgeer talks to Wallpaper* about her creative journey from Amsterdam to Kyoto, the beauty of imperfection and the 'soft power' of textiles.

Wallpaper*: Why did you move to Kyoto?

Mae Engelgeer: I decided to move to Amsterdam after cycling around on a borrowed bike. The freedom, excitement and opportunity I felt made it clear I needed to be there. Then, after half my life in Amsterdam, I had the same feeling in Japan. There’s so much to discover artistically here, in terms of techniques, textiles and materials. It’s also about living at a calmer pace. I had built up a network over 10 years, travelling between Amsterdam and Kyoto, so knew this was the next step and a life-changing adventure for my family. For me, as an artist and designer, I just get this sparkling feeling here. I’m inspired and curious.

W*: Can you sum up Kyoto?

ME: Treasures – often hidden. Green – from nature to food. Time – coffee, patience, Zen.

W*: What was the seed of Utsuroi Hymn?

ME: I was first invited to Ryosokuin a few years ago. I immediately noticed its special atmosphere. Ito-san told me the temple holds a textile archive. Until then, I’d never realised that textiles were historically offered to temples because of their value and significance. What moved us both was the idea that these textiles, although incredibly beautiful, were no longer used. They were slowly ageing, almost disappearing into storage, while still carrying so much history. From there, the idea emerged to create artworks that could allow these textiles to find their way back into the temple space in a contemporary form.

W*: What was it like working with such historic textiles?

ME: When I first viewed the archive, I was beyond excited. The textiles were carefully wrapped in layers of paper, marked with handwritten Japanese text. I took time with each piece – slowly opening the packages, unfolding the fabrics, looking at both the front and back, really absorbing every detail. The richness of the patterns, the colours, the craftsmanship – everything felt incredibly refined and thoughtful.

W*: What stood out most?

ME: Their traces of time: the transparency of certain fabrics, the vibrancy of the colours, the handwritten text on the reverse sides and areas almost falling apart from years of folding or use. For me, those marks of time are incredibly beautiful. Rather than hiding them, I wanted to highlight them.

W*: What did the creative process look like?

ME: My projects rarely begin with a fixed plan – they evolve slowly through spending time with the materials. So the starting point developed very intuitively. I spent hours inside the archive, surrounded by the fabrics, observing them closely. I started by dividing and grouping the different textiles I encountered, paying attention to their textures, colours, transparency, wear and structure.

W*: And how did the works take shape?

ME: I was drawn to forms that are deeply connected to Japanese history and daily life, such as byobu folding screens and kakejiku hanging scrolls. Because weaving, tapestry and rugs are such an important part of my practice, I also wanted to create new woven works inspired by sakiori, a traditional Japanese weaving technique using strips of old fabric to create something new. I was very moved by the idea of transformation, reuse and continuation through material.

W*: What message are you hoping to convey with these creations?

ME: I was very conscious that these were not just for today, but for future generations. Through the structures, the fading of colours, the rhythm and order of the fabrics and the traces of time, I hope the works create subtle gestures that resonate with people and stay with them emotionally. And I hope this archive can continue into the future through these artworks.

W*: It’s been three years now: how is living in Kyoto shaping you creatively?

ME: Living here has gradually deepened my creative practice in a very natural way. While I continue to work internationally and remain connected to other places, being here has introduced a completely new layer to my work and opened a different direction within it.

W*: In what way?

ME: Often, new works begin from materials or details I encounter in my immediate surroundings – and that instinct has not changed. What has changed in Japan is the depth of history connected to those materials and processes. Here, I often work with century-old archives, traditional techniques or stories and philosophies that carry a very long cultural memory. I think my role is often to gently transform, twist or highlight an existing element and help shape it towards the future while still respecting its origin.

W*: How does Japan's textile culture compare to other places?

ME: It feels very unique because of the deep respect for material, process and the time embedded within it. Europe also has an incredible textile history and craftsmanship – but in Japan I feel a strong sensitivity towards preservation and continuity: the idea that textiles are not simply functional or decorative objects, but carriers of memory, ritual and care.

W*: And how about the craftsmanship world?

ME: For me, the process of testing possibilities and pushing materials or techniques into new territory is an essential part of developing new work. For these temple works, I had the opportunity to collaborate with two craftsmen who were very open to experimentation and exploring less conventional requests. What I appreciated in these collaborations was the openness and curiosity on both sides – finding ways to translate historical materials and traditional craftsmanship into something contemporary together.

W*: And concepts of beauty?

ME: In Japan, imperfections, ageing, fading or repair can become part of the beauty of a textile rather than something to hide. What I enjoy most is being able to exist between those worlds – bringing my own European perspective and experimental approach into dialogue with Japanese craftsmanship and philosophy. That exchange is very inspiring for me creatively.

W*: What are you seeking in your creative work?

ME: I am always searching for a certain softness – even though my compositions are often quite graphic and structured, I want the lines and materials within them to remain organic and natural. I’m not interested in forcing materials into something too controlled.

W*: What’s coming next?

ME: 'Tsudoi / Gathering', an exhibition presented in Karimoku Commons Kyoto earlier this year will move to Tokyo in July. I’m also preparing a joint exhibition, 'Echoes of Wa', at Spazio Nobile in Brussels with ceramics master Hosai Matsubayashi in September. For this, I’m also experimenting with chochin lantern-making and bamboo. I’m also deepening my collaboration with textile house Hosoo, gently challenging their machines and traditional weaving, exploring how far we can push the technique while still respecting its precision and heritage.

W*: And your longterm hope?

ME: What connects everything for me is the soft power of textiles – their ability to carry memory, emotion and history in a subtle but profound way. Many works I’m making at the moment feel like starting points. My hope is to continue building on these – and continue exploring how the soft power of textiles can shape how we experience spaces.

It’s both ancient – and modern. The shoji screen, handcrafted using a millennia-old Japanese papermaking technique, is not flat: it gently undulates like a waterfall, the softened geometry of its crafted wooden frame illuminated like shifting daytime skies by hidden LEDs.

This harmony of paper, wood and light is 'Grid Unwoven', the alchemical result of a creative collaboration between Lanzavecchia + Wai, a design studio in Italy and Singapore, and Takanori Senda, a Japanese artisan specialising in ancient Mino Washi papermaking in Gifu Prefecture.

It’s one of six new creations launched in the latest edition of Craft x Tech, an innovative initiative that fuses Japan’s traditional crafts heritage with progressive technology and contemporary design to create new pathways for endangered artisan traditions to thrive in modern times.

The project matches six contemporary international creators with traditional makers in Japan. The inaugural edition two years ago specialised in the northeastern Tohoku region, while the latest collection focuses on the craftsmanship of the central Tokai area.

From tiled chairs and modular tables to rainbow-bright tie-dyed lighting systems, six creations were brought to life by a collection of designers, including David Caon, Philippe Malouin, Bethan Laura Wood, Atang Tshikare, Eugene Studio and Lanzavecchia + Wai.

The idea of evolution rather than preservation lies at the heart of Craft x Tech, which is helmed by Hideki Yoshimoto, founder of Tangent design studio and a project associate professor at the University of Tokyo, with curatorial direction by Maria Cristina Didero.

‘Craft x Tech has always been about exploring how Japanese craftsmanship can engage with contemporary culture and design – not simply as preservation, but as an evolving creative practice,’ Yoshimoto tells Wallpaper*.

‘For this Tokai Edition, we were particularly interested in a region where craft and industrial production have historically developed side by side. At the same time, bringing together a wider range of international creatives made for really rich dialogues across different materials, cultures and approaches to making.’

London designer Bethan Laura Wood was immersed in the colourful cosmos of Arimatsu Narumi Shibori, an ancient tie-dyeing craft in Aichi Prefecture, celebrated for its original textures, intricate shading and complex patterns.

The result of Wood’s partnership with Hiroyuki Murase of Suzusan, a fifth-generation artisan family, is a textile-wrapped lighting system called ‘Kataginu’ – cascading suspensions of bloom-like textiles, meticulously crafted and organically steeped in exotic bursts of colour patterns.

‘I was struck by all the different ways in which the tying and binding can create complex patterns,’ she says. ‘I knew I wanted to work with a vibrant mix of two colours in conversation and to highlight this bleach-like blur that comes from the reaction between the two dyes, which cannot be overly controlled. This captures the “living” quality of the dye – being active, moving and reacting to the physical placement and folding of the fabric.’

For David Caon, a Sydney-based designer known for his aircraft innovations, the idea of ‘letting go of control’ shaped 'Fushi' – an elegant console and lighting system made from clean-lined modular ceramic components fired in Oribe glaze, creating deep, textured shades of bamboo green.

The components were crafted by Yohei Ito, the third-generation head of Fudogama kiln, specialising in Mino Yaki, a regional ceramics tradition in Gifu Prefecture dating back to the fifth century.

‘With Mino Yaki objects, part of the beauty of the craft is that every piece becomes quite unique after firing,’ explains Caon. ‘As a designer, there is not the same level of control over the final appearance of the objects that I have with other processes.’

Meanwhile, the industrialist minimalism of British-Canadian designer Philippe Malouin encountered the vividly decorative world of Owari Shippo, a type of enamelware from Aichi Prefecture, resulting in a highlight: the pared-back elegance of ‘Kasane’, stackable boxes with randomly speckled surfaces, their geometry inspired by sculpted conical sand mounds found in Kyoto’s Ginkaku-ji gardens.

Ceramics and chairs are not often juxtaposed, yet Eugene Kangawa of Tokyo-based Eugene Studio innovatively layered the deep indigo beauty of Seto Sometsuke Yaki ceramics with traditional mortise-and-tenon joinery to create a series of chairs, with matching tea vessels.

Clean-lined angles are wrapped sharply in white porcelain tiles hand-painted in indigo pigment, created in collaboration with Mayuki Kato, the fourth-generation head of Shingama kiln in Aichi Prefecture.

Another highlight was Atang Tshikare’s sculptural dialogue with Iga Kumihimo, braided silk threads in vivid shades, a traditional craft rooted in the natural beauty of Mie Prefecture.

‘Yamollo’ is a lighting work that takes the shape of a layered cascade of Iga cords in earthy tones, shifting from light at the top to dark at the base, hinting at the dynamism of a volcano – brought to life with artisan Tomoyuki Matsuda, fourth-generation CEO of Itogo.

Meanwhile, Lanzavecchia + Wai developed the flowing screen ‘Grid Unwoven’ with Mino Washi master Senda of Warabi Paper Company – pushing the traditional scale to its limits by creating a 2m by 2m screen that flows and curves, with a backlighting system evoking a sense of sky.

And threaded connectively through each of the projects? A sense of possibilities for traditional craft forms that continuously adapt, evolve and explore the boundaries of their potential.

As founder Yoshimoto explains: ‘In the long term, I hope Craft x Tech can become a platform where traditional knowledge and contemporary creativity intersect to generate new possibilities for craft. I see craft not as something static or nostalgic, but as a living body of knowledge that can continue shaping the future of design and culture.’

Craft x Tech Tokai Project 2026 Tokyo Exhibition runs at Kudan House in Tokyo from 30 May to 2 June

The deep-rooted connection between design cultures in Denmark and Japan is well documented. So much so that, in the last decade, it has given rise to the slightly wince-inducing catch-all term ‘Japandi’, a word invented to make a particular aesthetic of minimalism and honest materials more marketable. However, to reduce the connection between the two design cultures to moodboard-level aesthetics alone, Wallpaper’s Japan editor Jens H Jensen argues, is to miss the point entirely.

'When people think about Japanese design, they often only think about the simplicity of the design. I see it more as an honest and very pragmatic approach that resonates well with the Danish design tradition, where form always follows function,' he tells Wallpaper*. 'Japanese [and Danish] design isn’t simple to try to be minimalist. It’s simple because it’s often the most pragmatic way of making a certain product, resulting in honest, no-frills objects that require an extremely high level of craftsmanship to execute well.'

For Jensen, it is the close relationship between designers and manufacturers that distinguishes Japanese design objects from products that simply trade on a Japanese-inspired aesthetic.

'You might be able to get some nice photos for Instagram, but if you look at many of these Japanese-inspired products up close, the level of craftsmanship simply isn't there.'

‘Japanmade Vol.I’ at 3 Days of Design 2026

In ‘Japanmade Vol.1’, an exhibition being held next week (10-12 June) during 3 Days of Design 2026 in Copenhagen, Jensen – who has lived in Japan for more than 20 years – has teamed up with fellow Danes at OEO Studio – which has a project office in central Tokyo – to explore this connection. ‘My aim with “Japanmade” is to highlight contemporary design made by real craftspeople, objects that are built to last a lifetime. The quality of the materials and finishing touches is on a completely different level.’

Located in the same building as the city's harbourside exhibition space Pakhus 11, ‘Japanmade Vol.1’ occupies three connecting rooms accessed by a different entrance. Within these intimate spaces, visitors are presented with an edited selection of Japanese design as seen through Jensen's and OEO's Danish lens. The selection includes work from five brands working exclusively within Japan and across a broad range of materials – from washi (Japanese paper), solid brass, hinoki wood, soy wax and even plastic. Works are presented on staging made from cardboard pallets – a low-carbon solution that OEO and Jensen hope will make the experience feel more like visiting a gallery than a traditional interior design exhibition.

Thomas Lykke, who founded OEO Studio with Anne-Marie Buemann in 2003 and has maintained a presence in Japan for nearly 20 years, describes the exhibition as ‘a distilled and edited selection viewed through a holistic lens and approach’. While Japanese and Scandinavian design are often grouped together through shared qualities such as simplicity, craftsmanship and material honesty, he believes the relationship is more complex. ‘There are certainly links and shared values between Japanese and Scandinavian design,’ he says. ‘That said, the bond goes deeper than that.’

Jensen shares that view. ‘I think that Japanese design is highly respected and appreciated throughout much of the global design community for its simplicity and extraordinary attention to detail. However, there is a tendency to focus on very traditional crafts. I hope Japanmade can help to show the variety of materials and production methods.’

For example, Sekisaka, a 300-year-old Japanese manufacturer from the Kawada district of Sabae City, Fukui Prefecture, will present contemporary objects informed by traditional Urushi lacquerware, but realised in durable resin and ABS plastic that make them suitable for daily use in schools, hospitals and airlines.

MAS, a sub-brand of Karimoku Furniture, will showcase furniture rooted in Japanese woodworking expertise, including pieces made from hinoki – Japanese cypress – a durable, lightweight softwood more commonly associated with traditional architecture and construction than furniture making. Meanwhile, 300-year-old handmade paper workshop Naowashi by Gen Taniguchi, in Nao, Saga Prefecture, will show products made entirely from locally grown kajinoki paper mulberry rather than the more typical kozo variety. Kajinoki fibres are longer and intertwine more easily, producing paper that is both thin and strong.

Artisanal soybean candlemakers Sheep will display candles handmade at its workshop in Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, using high-quality soy wax, pure essential oils and cotton wicks, while New Light Pottery, a lighting studio based in Nara, the ancient former capital of Japan, will present lamps that celebrate the beauty of local materials such as Japanese washi paper, glass, ceramics, lacquer-finished brass and marble

'The strong bond, mutual respect and physical proximity between designer and manufacturer play a big role in the final product. This is something I believe is quite unique to Japan and is something to celebrate,' reflects Jensen. 'In Denmark, for instance, many of the famous furniture makers now produce outside of Denmark. I truly believe something essential gets lost when the distance between design and production increases.'

The exhibition's 'Vol.1' title suggests that ‘Japanmade’ may be the first in a series. 'Only the future can tell,' Lykke says. 'Having said that, we naturally hope “Japanmade” will evolve over time. We'll take it step by step and see where the journey leads.'

‘Japanmade Vol.1’ will open during 3 Days of Design from 10-12 June at Dampfærgevej 2, Nordhavn, Copenhagen

Capella Kyoto is many things: the long-awaited Japan debut of the Singapore luxury hospitality brand, Kengo Kuma’s reimagining of a former elementary school as a contemporary machiya, and now the home of SingleThread’s first international outpost. It’s a fitting homecoming for owners Kyle and Katina Connaughton, who spent years living and working in Japan before opening their acclaimed three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Healdsburg, California.

Wallpaper* dines at SoNoMa by SingleThread, Kyoto

The mood: foliage and flowers

Like the hotel itself, SoNoMa by SingleThread was designed by Hong Kong and Singapore-based Brewin Design Office. Here, the journey begins long before the first course arrives. Beyond a white noren curtain lies a residential-style lounge furnished with antiques and objects sourced from Kyoto’s auction houses and vintage shops, where a seasonal welcome drink and amuse-bouche ease diners into the evening before a sliding screen reveals the chef’s counter beyond.

The 12-seat dining room overlooks the hotel’s tsuboniwa courtyard garden through a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass. Cherry blossom, camellias, stone and still water form a living backdrop that shifts subtly as daylight fades, reinforcing the restaurant’s connection to seasonality. Custom tables and seating by Brewin Design Office are paired with table mats crafted by Tajiri-san of Lether Kyoto, while floral arrangements by Katina Connaughton and Capella’s flower team bring seasonal softness to the room. Timber, plaster and stone create a space that feels warm, tactile and distinctly Kyotoite.

Pay attention to the tabletop too. Handcrafted vessels by Hasu Yoshitaka, Nagatani, Kojima Kenji and Kojima Yosuke transform each course into a study of materiality, while cutlery by Yuichi Takemata, Kyo Amahare and Marunao sits alongside glassware from Sus Gallery, Kimura Glass and Austrian crystal specialist Zalto.

The food: ‘The story of the day’

Head chef Keita Tominaga grew up in Sonoma County, the region from which the restaurant takes its name. The title is also a play on the Japanese characters for imagination (so), possession (no) and space (ma). The resulting omakase reflects both worlds, weaving Kyoto’s seasonal produce together with ingredients from SingleThread Farm.

Spring announces itself through white asparagus with sweet shrimp and young burdock, before a sequence of beautifully judged small plates arrives: fava beans with Hokkaido sea urchin, spring sea bream sushi over matcha vinegar rice, and firefly squid sharpened with chrysanthemum chimichurri and aonori.

A standout dish of bamboo shoots, harvested each morning from a private grove outside Kyoto, captures the season’s fleeting nature, paired with tofu, lemon, and a finishing drizzle of SingleThread’s estate olive oil. Seafood is a particular strength. Kinmedai and sakura buri are dressed simply with shiranui ponzu and kohlrabi, while smoked silver cherry salmon balances delicate richness with plum and flower pepper. A silky clam chawanmushi, meanwhile, demonstrates the kitchen’s inventive twists.

The meal deepens with Nanatani duck, one of Kyoto’s most prized heritage breeds, slow-grilled over coals and served alongside spring cabbage, kumquat and seasonal Honda Miso. It is followed by one of the evening’s highlights: hairy crab rice enriched with herb butter and dashi. Desserts are equally assured, from satsuma mandarin scented with California bay leaf to Hokkaido milk and local honey.

The 440-bottle cellar leans heavily towards California but leaves room for discovery, including a thoughtful selection of Japanese wines, such as Pinot Noir from Hokkaido, and a sake programme that highlights Kyoto’s distinctive brewing culture.

SoNoMa by SingleThread is located at Capella Kyoto, 130 Komatsucho, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto, 605-0811, Japan

Italian fashion house Miu Miu has never limited itself to the field of fashion – of simply adorning women in pretty clothes. Through schemes like Women’s Tales (a platform for commissioning female-led short films) and various artistic collaborations, it has championed women’s empowerment and supported those expressing themselves in other fields.

And, while the house recently organised the Miu Miu Literary Club during Milan Design Week – encouraging attendees to read books and discover more about female authors – on 13 May 2026, the house arrived in Tokyo, and turned to music, to mark the reopening of its store in the city’s Ginza neighbourhood with a one-night-only jazz club.

Inside the Miu Miu Jazz Club, Tokyo

Indeed, Miu Miu has always embraced the diverse cultures of the various countries where it has a retail base. When its London store reopened in late 2025, the brand celebrated the occasion at Koko, the iconic music club in Camden that recently marked its 125th anniversary. In honouring the reopening of the Ginza store, Miu Miu paid tribute to Japan’s distinctive jazz culture.

Originating in the United States, jazz was brought to Japan as early as the 1920s by Japanese people who had travelled to America via the Pacific, and has been a part of the country's culture ever since. With the opening of Japan’s first dance halls during the same period, jazz took root in Japanese society, alongside ballroom dancing. It also spawned a distinctive local listening culture, what is known as the ‘jazz kissa’ – a café to listen to jazz.

Following the unveiling of the renewed Ginza store, which houses Miu Miu’s first VIP salon in the country – aligned with the brand's philosophy to be tailored to Japanese customers who appreciate intimate hospitality – the venue for the one-night-only jazz club was the Dance Hall Shinseiki, which opened in 1948, shortly after the Second World War. Located near Ueno, a cultural district in Tokyo where Japan’s first public art museum (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum) and art university (Tokyo University of the Arts) are still based. It is now the only remaining dance hall in Japan.

It was an apt location for the jazz club, with the evening unfolding against the backdrop of a nostalgic dance hall, where the original interior from some 80 years ago remains intact – complete with velvet stage curtains and Victoriana-style damask wall coverings. Performances included young Japanese trumpeter Reiya Terakubo and jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara, the latter acclaimed worldwide. A Grammy Award winner, Uehara is a fearless artist who, at the age of 17, was invited by the late jazz pianist and composer (and legend in his field) Chick Corea to join him on stage.

Immersed in the rich and versatile melodies, it felt as if Uehara was playing in a quartet rather than solo. Incorporating elements of Latin, rock and classical music, she nonetheless encapsulated the unique character of Japanese jazz. Her performance also saw her use her body as if dancing, the smoky stage lighting only adding to the atmosphere. A revelation, the pianist transfixed even Miu Miu’s younger fans, who might not usually be drawn to jazz.

miumiu.com

There’s a moment – fleeting, almost imperceptible – when you step into a truly great bar or restaurant and feel the world outside dissolve. It’s not just the lighting, or the music, or even the promise of what’s to come in the glass. It’s something deeper, something quieter. A sense that you are being looked after in a way that feels both effortless and profound. In the West, we’ve grown accustomed to calling this ‘service’. In Japan, they call it something else entirely.

They call it hospitality, though even that word feels like a blunt instrument when set against the precision of the Japanese concept of omotenashi: a philosophy that elevates the act of caring for a guest into an art form. To understand it properly, you must recalibrate your expectations. Because what Japan offers, whether in a tiny Ginza cocktail den or a centuries-old Kyoto ryokan, is not hospitality as performance, but hospitality as devotion.

The ritual of care

Walk into a high-end cocktail bar in Tokyo and you’ll notice something immediately: silence, or at least a reverent hush. Not the awkward quiet of an empty room, but the composed stillness of a place where every movement has intention. The bartender doesn’t greet you with exuberance or forced familiarity. Instead, there’s a nod, measured, respectful. You are acknowledged, not overwhelmed. The experience begins not with noise, but with observation.

And this is where Western hospitality often falters. We’ve grown used to equating warmth with volume, friendliness with informality. In doing so, we’ve lost sight of the idea that true hospitality might be less about expression and more about attention.

In Japan, the bartender watches. They notice how you sit, how you hold the menu, whether you glance more often at the whisky selection or the citrus garnishes. Recommendations are not delivered; they are arrived at.

It’s a subtle dance, and one that requires not just skill, but discipline.

The craft beneath the surface

This discipline is rooted in a broader cultural framework, one that finds expression in everything from cuisine to craftsmanship. Two concepts are particularly instructive here: monozukuri and kaizen.

Monozukuri speaks to the spirit of making, of pursuing perfection through dedication to process. It’s the reason a sushi chef might spend a decade mastering rice before touching fish, or why a bartender will practice the same stirring motion thousands of times until it becomes second nature. Kaizen, meanwhile, is the philosophy of continuous improvement. Not grand reinvention, but incremental refinement. A slightly clearer ice cube. A marginally smoother pour. A garnish placed half a centimetre more precisely.

Witness this first-hand in Ginza's fabulously compact Apollo bar or, at the opposite end of the scale, the positively cavernous Little Smith, complete with its high vaulted ceilings, and it all makes complete sense.

Together, these ideas form the artistic backbone of Japanese hospitality. They ensure that what appears effortless is, in fact, the result of relentless pursuit.

The quiet majesty of artistic blending

It's these hallowed principles that also underpin the foundations of Hibiki – the Japanese blended whisky launched by Suntory back in 1989. Today, Hibiki, with its distinctive 24-sided bottle (representing the 24 different Japanese seasons), has become a global phenomenon, largely thanks to its distinct yet subtle house style: fresh, vibrant and citrus-led, with a delicate wisp of smokiness sitting alongside a richer, more complex sherry-cask driven maltiness. It is as effortlessly drinkable over a hand-carved ice block as it is mixed into a tall, refreshing highball – arguably the serve, which best demonstrates why Hibiki has been one of the foundations of Japanese bar hospitality for four decades.

To understand why Japanese whisky has evolved into the cherished and revered spirit it is today requires a speedy excursion on the Shinkansen, outside of the bustling hum of Tokyo, to the altogether more serene landscape of the Kansai Plains, home to the Yamazaki distillery.

There’s something ethereal about the light here: a clarity and brilliance – a literal luminescence, if you like – that doesn’t seem to exist anywhere else. It’s most noticeable as you pass by the densely wooded areas, interspersed by a tapestry of sprawling green and crops of tiny houses, as you blast towards Kyoto. It's something that Ian Fleming also noticed when writing his Bond classic, You Only Live Twice, back in the early 1960s, reflecting on how remarkable Japanese whisky was – years ahead of any other commentators: ‘Apparently, you only make good whisky where you can take good photographs... something to do with the effect of the clear light on the alcohol...’

Today, as the same sunlight streams into the stillhouse at Yamazaki, it bounces off an odd copper menagerie of varying shapes and sizes. Each still vital in creating the different, distinct styles of spirit that go into the Hibiki blend, which is then gently coaxed into becoming a whisky after years spent ageing in a variety of different American and European oak cask types: ex-sherry butts, bourbon barrels, French wine barriques, capacious 500-litre puncheons and – perhaps the most important of all – rare casks made from mizunara oak, an unique Asian strain, which brings a distinctive incense-like aroma to the resulting whisky.

The blending of Hibiki is not just whisky creation. Seeing it first-hand feels like a philosophy in liquid form. It embodies the Japanese approach to harmony: balance over bravado, subtlety over spectacle. Where Scotch whisky often celebrates the individuality of a single malt, Hibiki leans into the art of blending. It is about creating something greater than the sum of its parts, a seamless integration of flavours that unfold gently, revealing layers over time.

Artistry is something that runs deep within the dynasty of Suntory. Family member and former master blender Keizo Saji was a patron of Japanese arts and founded the Suntory Hall in Tokyo exactly 40 years ago. Suntory has also been instrumental in helping to preserve the ancient art of handmade washi paper, working with acclaimed artist Eriko Horiki and her creative studio since the Hibiki brand was founded, to provide the beautifully textured labels adorning its bottles.

However, Suntory's latest artistic collaboration might just be its most ambitious step yet into Japan's rich and deeply cultural artistic history.

The Chiso kimono house can trace its roots back to 1555 and has been meticulously crafting silk kimonos for high-profile clients throughout its 470 years. Today, is it arguably one of Japan's most respected family-run artisan companies, still operating from the same base in Kyoto. The house has historically designed and created pieces for the Japanese royal family and was one of the first companies to promote its craft internationally as Japan’s Renaissance developed globally in the late 1880s. Around this time, the hierarchy of designs, once limited by royal status, became less significant and consumers of all stature could afford beautiful handmade creations.

Chiso has over 20,000 pieces in its archives, including textiles and designs from the Shogun period, which are now considered national treasures. It was a handful of these historic designs that provided the inspiration to create a one-off, bespoke, hand-painted kimono for Hibiki, which has taken a year to complete. Bespoke kimono design involves 20 separate processes, each one requiring a specific master of their craft. Chiso produces only a dozen bespoke designs a year (each one starting at around three million yen – £14,000) and has over 300 specialised silk painters, embroiderers and illustrators to call upon. Translating the outline designs onto silk requires a specific natural blue flower ink, which disappears once the piece is completed, requiring a month of solid work, by hand.

The finished kimono for Hibiki will be worn by the whisky brand’s global ambassador, Japanese actress Anna Sawai, but first, it will be displayed at JFK airport, as part of an installation to celebrate the opening of the airport's new terminal in June 2026.

Culinary Echoes

The parallels between such ornate craftsmanship and Japanese cuisine are impossible to ignore. Consider the intricate patterns of the kimono, where every thread, every dye, is chosen with intention. These are not merely aesthetic pursuits. They are artistic expressions that place value on precision, patience, and respect for materials.

In the culinary realm, this manifests itself in dishes that appear deceptively simple. A visit to Kyoto's multi-award-winning restaurant Tempura Matsu or the deeply traditional Hanasaki Manjiro perfectly articulates how a piece of sashimi, an ornately cut tofu cake, or a perfectly grilled skewer of yakitori is the result of years, sometimes decades, of refinement.

So where does this leave us, as Western diners and drinkers?

It would be easy – and perhaps comforting – to frame Japanese hospitality as an exotic ideal, something to admire from afar but not necessarily replicate. But that would be a mistake.

Because the truth is, we haven’t lost the capacity for genuine hospitality. We’ve simply allowed it to be overshadowed by speed, efficiency, and the relentless pursuit of scale.

In many Western establishments, the focus has shifted from how something is done to how quickly it can be done. Service becomes transactional. Interactions become scripted. The guest becomes a client, rather than an individual to be cared for.

Japan offers a different perspective.

It reminds us that hospitality is not a checklist, but a mindset. That excellence is not achieved through shortcuts, but through sustained effort. And that the smallest details – an ice cube, a gesture, a moment of silence – can have the greatest impact.

Neil Ridley stayed at the Okura Hotel in Tokyo (okura.com) and the Mitsui Hotel in Kyoto (marriott.com)

Launched in 1984 as an upscale addition to the multifaceted Marriott hotel group, the JW Marriott brand delivers a relevant kind of luxury for each country it’s operating in (currently 130 hotels across more than 40 countries and regions). In Japan, the brand’s tally stands at two – the first opened in Nara in 2020, while its Tokyo incarnation opened in October 2025 – and the relevant kind of luxury here is that soothingly quiet minimalism that the Japanese so excel at.

In the quaint and compact city of Nara – the capital of Nara Prefecture and about an hour from Kyoto – the star attraction is the 1,000-odd docile deer that roam freely around a park in the city’s east. It’s hard to resist a deer that bows at you for a cracker, so, understandably, the tourists flock here and this part of the city can feel pretty congested at times.

The JW Marriott Nara, the first international luxury hotel to open in the city, is a low-rise six-storey building located west of the main train station and feels like a calm oasis from the hullabaloo, peppered as it is with subtle Japanese elements and deer motifs. The ground floor, open-plan reception, lobby and piano bar feel welcoming and spacious, as do the 158 guest rooms, with their noiseless views across the city. A particular highlight is the hotel restaurant, Azekura, which offers a refined Japanese experience through three different styles of Japanese cuisine – teppanyaki, sushi and kaiseki. A series of beautifully presented, carefully composed little plates of food with a strong focus on seasonal, local ingredients introduced such delights as firefly squid and the wagyu sakura leaf sushi.

Also opened in 2020, nearly 300 miles away in Tokyo, the Takanawa Gateway station is the main transport hub of a spankingly shiny, mixed-use, ‘smart city’ redevelopment project. Featuring a mix of high-rise office towers, shopping malls, dining options, residential spaces and cultural hubs (including the Kengo Kuma-designed Museum of Narratives, which opened in March 2026), this futuristic new district is not unlike a traffic-free Canary Wharf, but with robots that do everything from cleaning to delivering drinks and transporting pedestrians around the site.

The station is incredibly well connected, with Tokyo station, Shibuya and Shinjuku a few stops away, while the nearby Shingawa station is the future terminus for the next-generation magnetic bullet trains that will eventually connect Tokyo with Osaka in around an hour.

A hop and a skip from the station is the brand new JW Marriott, which occupies the uppermost floors of a 30-storey high-rise. Designed by Yabu Pushelberg, with a creative narrative driven by Zen philosophy and classical Japanese minimalism, it’s a tranquil space that cocoons you the moment you emerge from the lifts. Moody, low-lit public spaces with wood panelling, muted fabrics and warm copper finishes create a cosiness, while a flickering fireplace, the seductive, ever-present scent by Flamingo Estate, and Lasvit’s luminous glass centrepiece add to the serenity.

Guest rooms are spacious, well-accessorised and peaceful, soundproofed from the traffic and trains zipping around many floors below, while those looking for an extra hit of Zen can book a room in the Mindful wing (located on the same floor as the spa and fitness centre, it allows guests to bypass the reception check-in/check-out procedure).

The biggest draw, however, is the view. Jaw-dropping panoramic vistas catch the eye on every floor, at every angle. And it doesn’t really matter which side your room is on, the views are equally far-reaching and time-absorbing. From one side, you can see Tokyo Tower and as far as Mount Fuji (on a clearish day), while from another, there are sweeping views across the railyards and train tracks to Tokyo Bay and the Rainbow Bridge. And no matter what you are doing – taking a bath, tucking into the voluminous breakfast buffet or doing laps in the Instagrammable pool – it’s hard not to keep staring at it.

marriott.com

During Japan’s Edo Period, hundreds of feudal lords, samurai, priests, and tradesfolk traversed the Tokaido Road between Japan’s old and new capitals: Kyoto and Tokyo. Many inns welcomed travellers along the way, but there were none so rewarding as the ryokans of Hakone, where an abundance of natural hot springs soothed knotty muscles and weary feet. These days, standing out in the crush of Hakone’s modern-day ryokans isn’t easy, but a targeted renovation at KAI Hakone attempts to reinstate – and elevate – the restorative onsen stays of yesteryear.

Wallpaper* checks in at Kai Hakone

What’s on your doorstep?

KAI Hakone is located in Hakone Yumoto Onsen, Kanagawa Prefecture. An eight-minute drive from Hakone-Yumoto railway station, the ryokan is tucked into a wooded slope below a quiet, somewhat isolated stretch of the Old Tokaido Road. Transportation options are thin, but nature is plentiful. The property’s entrance is not grand, marked only by a squint-or-you’ll-miss-it sign leading to an unassuming parking lot next to the reception entrance. But once through the doors, serenity seeps in as the lamp-lit lounge and glass-walled forest and river views beckon.

Who is behind the design?

A 1987 inn was first reinvented by its new owners, the Hoshino Resorts Group, and Sakakura Associates Architects and Engineers in 2012. Now, a new chapter unfolds courtesy of the same architectural firm, along with Yuki Ito Architectural Design and head lead designer Hirofumi Inoue of Nomura Co., Ltd.

The renovation drew design cues from a condensed version of historic travellers’ many-week-long stays at spa retreats along the Tokaido Road. The addition of an outdoor tea house, Sawa Chaya, and a marquetry workshop invites convivial gatherings. Two sumptuous suites, housed above the workshop, offer private open-air onsens and intimate proximity to the complimentary coffee station, lounge and restaurant. Attention to detail is evident in several new art and design features, from a wood-scraps sculpture representing the elevation changes of the post towns along the old highway to bed throws depicting Edo-period tools that would have been unloaded at the foot of the futon.

The room to book

The ryokan offers just 34 rooms, all with expansive views and tatami flooring. Thirty-two are signature guest rooms with abstract artwork of essential Edo-period travel items, such as sandogasa – woven straw hats – or chochin – collapsible washi paper lanterns. Outdoor pathways of bamboo and stone connect the guestrooms ‘to represent material used to make the road in the Edo period,’ says manager Moeka Tsuyuki.

The two new 110 sq m Hakone Gokochi Suites steal the show with long, birch-hued corridors that lead past shoji-screened bedrooms to sunken, glass-walled living rooms. The open-air onsens off the shower room offer views of the Sugomo river that somehow feel both intimate and expansive. The connecting passage between living and bathing spaces is perhaps the most striking: A dark, spare ishi-no-ma (rock room) relaxation space with black walls, two simple wooden chairs, and cool, dark stone underfoot offers a small window to a terrace rock garden or a floor-to-ceiling window to the changing leaves outside.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Standard lodging plans include kaiseki course dinner and breakfast. The subterranean restaurant consists of semi-private dining spaces screened in wood and washi paper. A dearth of décor encourages focus on the cuisine, which begins with a soup made from chilled amazake, a fermented rice drink once consumed to restore energy after climbing the Hakone Pass. The procession of subsequent dishes follows the motif, with sashimi and other seasonal selections served in wooden boxes designed to look like old carrying cases. For breakfast, a wooden tray of jewel-like bites alongside a bubbling single-serve hot pot is served in one main course.

Staff at the lantern-lit tea house outside proffer complimentary herbal tea in the afternoons and a small variety of Japanese alcoholic drinks in the evenings.

Where to switch off

It’s all about the hot springs. Follow ‘The Immersion Path,’ a mural designed by Mitsuko Ogura that sports parading feudal lords alongside modern-day relay racers and skiers, down the lower corridor toward the two sex-segregated public onsens — 40-41°C baths powered by geothermal waters from sodium chloride springs. The baths are enclosed on three sides to protect against the elements, with one wall open to frame the Japanese maples and mountain stream like a painting. Each bath area also contains a dry sauna and a cold plunge pool.

The verdict

Kai Hakone remains a tranquil retreat in the heart of hot springs country. From Sawa Chaya, the simple outdoor tea room, to the gently cocooning rooms with framed views of forest and stream, it’s built for contemplation. The out-of-the-way location can be difficult for travellers without a car, but the point is to soak in the space, not use it as a base for exploration. For guests willing to spend a day or two sitting and savouring, the revived Kai Hakone is well worth the time.

Kai Hakone is located at 230 Yumotochaya, Hakone-machi, Ashigarashimo-gun, Kanagawa 250-0312, Japan

Kamakura sits on the Sagami Bay coastline, barely 50 kilometres southwest of Tokyo. It’s close enough for a day trip, yet Lulla House seems to exist in a different world altogether. The three-storey building sits directly on the beachfront, its sand-coloured plaster facade and rope-strung balustrades facing the bay, with Mount Fuji a whispery silhouette on the horizon on clear days. Recently completed, it is the work of Tokyo studio I IN, and unlike anything else in their portfolio.

Tour this minimalist Kamakura house by I IN

Founded in 2018 by partners Yohei Terui and Hiromu Yuyama – both alumni of the influential Tokyo studio Curiosity, where they worked under Gwenael Nicolas (who recently spoke to us about the future of retail architecture) – I IN has built its reputation on high-spec commercial interiors: the Japanese headquarters of Cartier, Tiffany's Tokyo office, Blue Bottle café, a Pokémon Centre. Lulla House represents a different kind of commission: a private residence for fashion and lifestyle designer Azusa Yamato, whose brand Lulla – which sells the furniture designed for this house alongside homeware and objects for daily life – uses the space as both home and showroom.

Yamato approached I IN after seeing their previous projects. What followed was a design process rooted in character rather than typology. 'They asked for something relaxed and personal, but also expressive and memorable. Like stepping into a world with its own character,’ says Yuyama who led the project. ‘Our first conversations focused more on lifestyle than architecture, how the family wanted to live, work, host people. The spatial concept developed naturally from there.’

The building is organised across three floors, each with a distinct identity. The ground floor, a palimpsest from the building's previous incarnation as a windsurfing school, still houses boards. The second floor opens dramatically to the bay: an uninterrupted living and dining space connected to a terrace via a sliding titanium volume that functions as both wall and entrance. When closed, it punctuates the rhythm of the sea-facing elevation; open, it dissolves the boundary between inside and out entirely.

Kitchen and closet doors are rattan – light, woven, and breathable, and chosen because I IN approached materials here the way a fashion designer approaches textiles. 'We treated the relationship between tiles and grout in the bathroom like fabric and thread,' says Yuyama. Those tiles – custom-made from sand sourced in Japan, in a dusty pink that is Yamato's signature colour, grouted in acid yellow – are the house's most exuberantly fashionable gesture: simultaneously playful and precise.

A newly installed spiral staircase in white plaster set against warm brushed timber anchors all three floors at the building's centre, drawing the eye upward through the full height of the house. The third floor closes around it intimately: an open wardrobe at the building's core, a bathroom occupying nearly half the floor plan, a bathtub oriented directly to Sagami Bay and Mount Fuji.

The exterior plaster was chosen to echo the colour of beach sand, so that the house, Yuyama says, feels as though it had simply risen from the sand. Yamato agrees. Her favourite spot is the living room, where the ocean fills the full width of the west-facing windows and light moves across the water in a way that makes time feel slower. 'Simply being here brings me back into balance,' she says, adding that Lulla House is ‘a place where I can quietly feel my core values of gentleness, grace, and inner strength’.

Which, it turns out, is also a fairly precise description of the house itself.

i-in.jp

Out of all architects to emerge from Japan in the last century, architect Toyo Ito is one of the most influential of his generation. Ito's architecture is defined by the presence of free-flowing floorplans and a sense of openness, as epitomised in well-known buildings like Sendai Mediatheque or the National Taichung Theater in Taiwan. But Ito’s portfolio cannot be appreciated simply by looking at photographs, no matter how eye-catching the buildings might seem from afar; His work needs to be directly experienced to be fully appreciated, as it is conceived to draw the visitor deeper and deeper into its carefully composed environment. ‘Human activity cannot, by its very nature, be reduced to mere function,' Ito says. 'Human daily life is an interplay of far more complex factors. It is by allowing function to remain ambiguous that we can feel joy in architecture.'

It's these intangible qualities that earned Ito a Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2013, and has made him one of the most recognisable names in the profession today. Here's everything you need to know about the pioneering Japanese architect.

Discover Toyo Ito, the award-winning Japanese architect

Who is Toyo Ito?

Toyo Ito was born in 1941 in Keijō, Korea (now, Seoul), which was then under Japanese rule. Upon their return to Japan, when Ito was two years old, his family settled in the countryside of Shimosuwa in the Nagano Prefecture. Growing up surrounded by meadows and mountains, running barefoot through the fields left a lasting memory for Ito as a child. ‘The fact that I often use curvaceous surfaces in my designs is influenced by my childhood,' Ito says. 'There aren’t straight lines in nature. Surrounded by curvaceous walls makes people – just like any other animals – feel comfortable.’

The origins of an architect

Even so, in his student days, Ito had never considered becoming an architect. When he decided to enter the University of Tokyo in 1961, one of Japan's most prominent academic institutions, he didn’t aspire to be an architect; he was busier playing baseball. It was only after coming across the works of architect Kiyonori Kikutake, who played a key role in the Japanese Metabolism movement that Ito grew interested in architecture.

Kikutake created numerous iconic buildings throughout the latter half of the 20th century, and Ito, then still a student, became determined to work under the Metabolist.

Toyo Ito's career development

Through his time with Kikutake, Ito learned that many architectural ideas 'lose their strength in time after a nights sleep,' he explains, 'Such ideas are pointless. Just as things learned through physical experience stick with you, I believe that designs conceived through physical engagement are the ones that truly hold their own.'

After working at Kikutake’s office from 1965 to 1969, Ito founded his own practice in Tokyo, Urban Robot, in 1971. He renamed his studio Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects in 1979, as it is still known to this day.

Under his own banner, Ito designed a number of instantly-recognisable buildings – notably, the Sendai Mediatheque in Sendai City, Japan (2001). The building made a significant impact on the architectural world, for its free-flowing interior that enabled visitors to wander through the space however they pleased. ‘For the first time, I truly realised I was pleased to have become an architect. Architecture can serve society,’ Ito says of his work on the project.

Recognition and legacy

Ito’s work continued to underscore that non-hierarchical is what truly keeps people engaged with a building. In the decades since establishing his practice, Ito has been widely recognised for his output and thinking. He is considered one of the most important 20th and 21st-century architects and received the acclaimed Pritzker prize in 2013. Ito's innovation, the Pritzker jury noted in its citation at the time, 'is only possible through Ito’s process of carefully and objectively analysing each situation before proposing a solution. Ito has said that he strives for architecture that is fluid and not confined by what he considers to be the limitations of modern architecture.'

Ito's international accolades also include the RIBA Royal Gold Medal 2006, the 2010 Praemium Imperiale, a Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale and an Honorary Royal Academician (HonRA) title awarded in 2023.

Key projects

White U

Where: Tokyo, Japan
When: 1976 (demolished in 1997)

White-U House, one of Ito’s earliest works, was a house he designed in 1976 for his sister, who had lost her husband to cancer, and her two daughters. The house, defined by a concrete wall, features a U-shaped floorplan, somewhat secluded from the surrounding residential neighbourhood. Almost like a monastery, it encloses an inner garden. The house was designed to be a spiritual place for meditation for the family who lost an important member.

Silver Hut

Where: Tokyo, Japan
When: 1984

Ito’s own house, ‘Silver Hut’, was built adjacent to his sister’s White-U House, and was the polar opposite - open and airy. As Ito stated, ‘When it rains, the sound of the rain beats down, and I am exposed to the harsh nature. It isn’t so comfortable, but there is a feeling that you are living with nature.'

This sense of openness is underscored by the fact that there are no individually separated rooms inside the house. Ito’s daughter, Maki Hashida, recalls that, without her own private room, she could not keep secrets; she ended up sneaking around to hide instead.

Sendai Mediatheque

Where: Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan
When: 2001

Ito's self-described ‘turning point work’ is Sendai Mediatheque, a multi-purpose cultural facility winning the competition organised by Sendai City in the Miyagi prefecture. Having attracted attention for his earlier residential and other projects, Ito was known for his innovative ideas, but not necessarily accepted by the wider public yet. The Sendai Mediatheque was the project that led him to pursue architecture that engages with society. The building, which serves as a library and a community space for citizens, features a framework in which 13 column-like tubes pierce through seven plates. Although eye-catching, these tubes are actually practical, supporting the structure as well as being conduits, passing through the floors to allow for services, natural light and airflow. Although some locals were initially reluctant to accept the unconventional design, the citizens of Sendai City were delighted because the floorplan, largely open and partition-free, allowed visitors to use it as they wished.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion

Where: London, UK
When: 2002

Located within London's Kensington Gardens, the temporary summer Serpentine Gallery Pavilion by Ito blurs the boundaries between architecture and nature, structural elements and art. Designed in collaboration with engineer Cecil Balmond, the pavilion is made of a mesh of seemingly randomly intersecting steel bars. The openings between the bars can function as windows or doors, or become opaque to form sections of walls or the ceiling.

TOD’S Omotesando Building (currently Kering Building)

Where: Tokyo, Japan
When: 2004

TOD’S Omotesando Building is situated on Tokyo's bustling Omotesando district, centred on a street lined with luxury brand shops. It is currently the Kering Japan headquarters. Since its completion, the building's irregular openings, which echo the zelkova tree branches lining the surrounding street, have become one of the symbols of the area. Unlike most commercial buildings which rely on a traditional curtain wall, TOD’s Omotesando Building incorporates an external concrete structure with glazed openings, whose pattern now defines its presence.

MIKIMOTO Ginza 2

Where: Tokyo, Japan
When: 2005

Located in Ginza, a district lined with flagship stores of luxury brands, the MIKIMOTO shop features a design that evokes falling petals, the bubbles emerging from the shells that nurture pearls, and the anticipation one feels when peering into a jewellery box. Constructed using a ‘steel-sheet concrete structure’ - in which concrete is poured between two metal plates - the building is supported by surprisingly thin walls, creating an open, column-free interior. MIKIMOTO Ginza 2 was the first building in the world, outside the realm of infrastructure engineering, to utilise this particular construction method.

Tama Art University Library (Hachioji Campus)

Where: Hachioji City, Tokyo, Japan
When: 2007

This art university library features a series of arched openings reminiscent of the aqueducts of Rome. Its concrete walls, formed by arches of varying spans curve not only on the façade but also extend internally, creating vaulted walls that spread out at various angles throughout the library. As a result, the interior resembles branches extending from a large tree trunk. ‘My intention was to give the feeling of reading a book amongst the trees,’ says Ito. The forest feel is heightened by the ground floor, which slopes gently to follow the building's inclined site.

Minna no Mori Gifu Media Cosmos

Where: Gifu City, Gifu Prefecture, Japan
When: 2015

Located in Gifu City, Gifu Prefecture, Minna no Mori – meaning ‘forest for everyone’ – Gifu Media Cosmos is a public multi-purpose institution centred on a library. Although the design appears unconventional, it is a very pragmatic, functional design devised to work in harmony with its natural environment. The building utilises groundwater from a nearby river for heating and cooling. Energy consumption has been reduced by more than 50 per cent compared to conventional buildings of a similar scale.

National Taichung Theater

Where: Taichung, Taiwan
When: 2016

‘The National Taichung Theater is not just a building that houses a grand theatre for staging an opera. The engine of the architecture is the opera,’ Ito says of National Taichung Theater, arguably his most internationally-acclaimed work. Indeed, the building unfolds almost like a performance: Comprising a thin three-dimensional curved reinforced concrete shell, with no distinct boundaries between floor, wall, column and ceiling, the National Taichung Theater took approximately 11 years to complete and has been described as one of the most challenging buildings in the world to construct.

The building includes three theatres, restaurants and shops, whose interior curves spill outward to form an outdoor garden, creating seamless continuity between interior and exterior. Ito believed that a cave-like setting was the perfect environment for theatre – a fundamental form of human expression.

‘Quiet and deep.’ This is how architect Kengo Kuma describes Miyagawa-cho, a Kyoto neighbourhood famed for its community ties, traditional wooden architecture and rich geisha culture. The same words reflect the essence of its newest arrival: Capella Kyoto.

The long-awaited Japan debut for the luxury Singapore brand, the new hotel recently opened in the heart of the district. Rebuilt on the site of a former elementary school, it’s one of a trio of new Kuma-designed structures – including a historic geisha theatre and community centre – together creating a connective hub between past and present, tradition and innovation.

Wallpaper* checks in at Capella Kyoto

What’s on your doorstep?

Capella Kyoto is very close to tourist-packed Gion, also famed for its time-etched streets and layered geiko (Kyoto geisha) culture. However, the hotel is in fact in nearby Miyagawa-cho, which is a little quieter and has a more local atmosphere. Capella Kyoto sits directly opposite a low-key side entrance to Kenninji, the city’s oldest Zen temple complex, a soul-soothing sanctuary of stone walkways and historic structures. Along the same street are generations-old family stores, from wooden bucket artisans to sandal makers.

Softly mirroring its surroundings, the hotel rises from the site of a former elementary school (whose vintage lighting and trodden floorboards are reborn in restaurant Yoi). Intimate and low-rise, the four-storey building has layers of roofs, dark wood frames, gently curved roof brackets and lattices of bamboo – a modern riff on the low curved inuyarai fencing that lines local houses, marking a boundary between home and street. The crafted beauty of noren curtains in dusty sakura pinks, by Kyoto-based textile artist Mae Engelgeer, marks the entrances (these will change with the seasons).

‘We applied the wisdom of the machiya to the hotel design,’ explains Kuma. ‘I wanted to evoke the image of smallness, local materials, tiered roofs, hidden inner gardens, layered internal spaces – just like a Japanese home.’

Who is behind the design?

Inspired by the intimacy of the traditional machiya townhouses on surrounding streets, the 89-room hotel is rooted in a pared-back serenity and crafted Kyoto touches, with architecture by Kengo Kuma & Associates and interiors by Brewin Design Office. Picture a deepening journey through sliding screens, an inner garden mirroring the micro-seasons, contemporary artworks and an elemental material palette (wood, stone, bamboo, paper) – harmonised with the effortless sense of modern luxury that goes hand in hand with the Capella brand.

‘This area is very connected to traditional house design,’ says Kuma, taking Wallpaper* on an exclusive tour of the hotel ahead of opening. ‘The uniqueness of a machiya lies in its layering, creating small spaces with multiple atmospheres. I wanted to show the quiet depth of this neighbourhood in the design of the hotel.’

When arriving, it’s all about transitioning: from street to home, outside world to inner sanctum. Rather than entering directly, sloped pathways of natural stone gently guide visitors inside. Along the way is a curved installation of earthy straw by artist Momoko Fuji, leading into the stillness of an intimate inner space. Here, floral arrangements in ceramic vases rest on sculptural wood tables, while timeless gold panels and calligraphic artworks hang in earthen-walled alcoves.

The journey continues along a light-flooded corridor, an internal tsuboniwa courtyard garden on the left – a serene composition of cherry blossoms, camellias, rocks, stones and cloud-reflecting pond; while on the right, paper screens filter the sound of flowing water from a basement fountain composed of large rocks from Gifu (‘to bring inside the sounds of nature,’ says Kuma). A sense of intimacy arises in the unwrapping of the hotel’s layers: ‘We used many sliding shoji screens to control privacy and soften natural light. These screens are the most important architectural vocabulary for a machiya.’

The light-shifting walkways lead into the Living Room – a screen-wrapped sanctuary. Here, staff in contemporary outfits fastened with Kyoto obi sashes sit at desks. Sunlight flickers on a paper screen behind a delicately gnarled bonsai. Historical books sit among flower arrangements and artworks, which range from the rhythmic paper folds of a hanging work crafted from geisha books to monochromatic Kyoto photography. It is here, every day before dinner, that a geiko or trainee maiko performs – a moment balancing intimacy with connection (guests are encouraged to chat at the end).

The room to book

Serene, spacious and soft in palette, the 89 rooms are elegant showcases of craftsmanship. Light filters through screens, alongside carpets marked with tatami mat lines, gently curved oak furniture, minimalist artworks by Kyoto creatives, including paper artist Kamisoe, textured tubular lighting and deep black bathtubs in granite bathrooms (or hinoki cypresswood tubs in suites). A highlight is curved sweeps of calligraphy on woven panels above the bed – a collaboration between avant-garde Okinawan calligraphy artist Daichiro Shinjo and Kyoto’s 17th-century kimono textile innovators Hosoo.

Views are firmly rooted in the surroundings – be it temples, old streets, or distant mountains. Six onsen suites are intimately fitted with private hot spring bathing and Zen gardens. ‘Our approach was to create spaces that felt grounded in the city’s architectural traditions while interpreting them in a contemporary way,’ Robert Cheng, founder of Brewin Design Office, tells Wallpaper*. ‘Rather than referencing history directly, we looked at underlying qualities such as proportion, materiality and atmosphere. We drew inspiration from the warm timber tones of a traditional Kyoto machiya to create spaces that feel more enveloping.’

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Behind a white noren curtain is scene-stealing SoNoMa restaurant by SingleThread. Created by Kyle and Katina Connaughton of wildly acclaimed SingleThread in California, the new outpost is the sensory culmination of decades spent exploring Japan’s culinary heritage, farming practices and earthy Iga ceramics. ‘It’s about the story of the day,’ says Kyle, highlighting its microseasonality. Inspired by an ochaya teahouse, the 12-seat counter restaurant – helmed by chef Keita Tominaga – serves up an omakase journey that is surprising and sensory, modern and creative, balancing Japan’s crafted flavours with a touch of California – from a forest-wrapped medley of early spring treats (fava beans, Hokkaido sea urchin, lily bulbs with sakura) to Kyoto duck sprinkled with fennel pollen from their Sonoma farm. ‘We use mainly Japanese ingredients but like to include an expression of California, even if it’s hidden,’ explains the chef.

Shaping the hotel’s daily rhythm is Lanterne – a light-flooded all-day restaurant with elegant sweeps of marble, herringbone floors and garden views. French cuisine with Japanese imprints is on the menu (a favourite is King Crab pain perdu with zesty kinkan kumquat and bisque); plus a fresh, buzzy breakfast (opt for an outdoor table when it’s warm). At the threshold is The Patisserie, serving SingleThread Entremets – otherworldly sweet treats displayed among foliage and flowers.

Yoi is a refreshingly laid-back spot for modern Japanese cuisine. Sit at the counter and enjoy a relaxed mix of treats – from sashimi platters served in a cloud of mist to chrysanthemum, spinach and young bamboo shoots in sesame dressing – alongside crafted cocktails such as Japanese Loafer (midori, bergamot, Kyoto craft gin and yuzu citrus).

Where to switch off

The basement is a temple to wellness. Start the day with gentle stretches and singing bowls by the fountain. The Ofuro Suites offer private onsen soaks overlooking a Zen-style garden. Auriga Spa has a menu inspired by the moon cycles, unfolding in four treatment rooms – where massages are perfectly executed in an aromatic cloud of curated oils and herbs – plus saunas and steam rooms in changing areas.

In addition, the hotel shines particularly brightly with its Capella Curates programmes. Inventive experiences tap into Kyoto’s layered culture – with a playful twist. I lost track of time with charismatic Seiji Naito, who helms Gion Naito, a century-old family-run wooden sandal company, a few minutes from the hotel, talking about the meaning of life, nature and the universe, while playing book games (yes, really) and trying on shoes. Other experiences include visiting a surf-loving lacquerware artisan and kintsugi workshops. The friendly staff are also accomplished at bespoke experiences.

The verdict

A smooth mesh of Kyoto culture and contemporary warmth, intimacy and connection, nature and city, tradition and innovation – all threaded together with a luxurious dose of Capella’s signature hospitality.

Capella Kyoto is located at 130 Komatsucho, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto, 605-0811, Japan

Two hours and 20 minutes by Shinkansen from Tokyo to Morioka, then 25 minutes by road. That's how close Azuma Farm Koiwai sits to the Japanese capital, and yet how far it feels from the Japan most luxury travellers know.

The man who identified that gap is Fumitomo Hayase, a career hotelier who spent 12 years overseeing the development of Aman Tokyo and Amanemu before founding his Kyoto-based hospitality company, Naru, in 2017. His first project with Naru was Azumi Setoda, launched in 2021 in collaboration with Adrian Zecha – the legendary hotelier who founded Aman – and built around the ryokan tradition, channelling Japan through the sea and the pan-Asian cultural exchange that shaped it.

Azuma Farm, the new brand Naru has developed in partnership with East Japan Railway Company, turns its back on the coast entirely. Azuma means ‘the East’, a pointed nod toward Tohoku, a region that sits largely outside the established luxury travel routes around Japan. Where most high-end itineraries cluster around Kyoto, the Hakone onsen belt, Nikko and the Seto Inland Sea, Tohoku draws its identity from Jōmon-period (14,000 BCE to 300 BCE) communities that predate the westward migrations across the archipelago, and an agrarian, mountain-rooted way of life never shaped by the tea ceremony or the classical ryokan aesthetic. It is a Japan that’s less mediated, less packaged and until now, largely underserved by serious hospitality.

Zecha’s influence on Azuma Farm has been indirect but foundational: a philosophy absorbed by Hayase through years of close collaboration, distilled into a single guiding principle – that the site, not the designer’s ego, determines what a place should become.

Tour Azuma Farm Koiwai

The first property, Azuma Farm Koiwai, opens on 23 April within historic Koiwai Farm in Iwate Prefecture. Begun 130 years ago as a reclamation project on barren volcanic terrain, today, the grounds span 3,000 hectares of diverse forest and pasture, shaped by generations of careful stewardship.

Hayase’s new project occupies eight hectares of that landscape, and designer Shiro Miura of Kyoto firm Rokkakuya understood from the outset that the architecture had to take second billing. He and the Koiwai Farm team walked the forest together, selecting and felling each tree individually before a plan was drawn.

The layout takes its cue from Jōmon-period settlements found throughout this region: villas arranged around a generous central clearing, with distinct zones for sleeping, gathering, eating and bathing. Twenty-two Forest Villas at 65.7 sq m and two larger Garden Villas at 87.4 sq m sit quietly within the tree line, opening to splendid views of Mount Iwate.

The hero material is century-old red pine, grown in Koiwai’s own managed forest. Ordinarily prone to warping, here, the timber is straight-grained and structural enough to form the trusses of the main building and clad every exterior surface. Ceilings are swathed in Koiwai cedar; columns in the guest rooms and dining hall use Iwate chestnut; furniture takes ash and oak, both broadleaf species native to this part of Tohoku. Even the earthen walls carry a local imprint: Koiwai pasture grass substitutes for conventional straw.

Beyond the villas is a fire-centred gathering space where evenings are warmed by glowing embers, whilst an onsen facility is due to open this November. Meanwhile, dining draws on Koiwai’s own produce and the wider Tohoku region, with seafood from the Sanriku coast paired with mountain ingredients from the interior.

As for guest diversions, the offerings mine Iwate’s cultural bounty. Horseback rides through the Ainosawa pastures connect guests to a horse-breeding tradition several centuries old. A Nanbu ironware tour takes visitors to the workshop of Koizumi Nizaemon, an 11th-generation master kettle-smith operating since 1659, where guests commission their own iron kettle – the ultimate turn-down gift that takes two to three months to complete. Seasonal hiking programmes thread through the volcanic plateau of Hachimantai. Excursions into Joboji Urushi lacquerware, the Tono wasabi fields, and the sake traditions of Ninohe extend the radius further, positioning the property as a base for serious regional exploration.

Azuma Farm Koiwai is located at 68-77 Maruyachi, Shizukuishi, Iwate District, Iwate 020-0507, Japan

Retail architecture is a shape-shifting realm, according to Japan-based French designer Gwenael Nicolas. The creative director, president and founder of studio Curiosity, Nicolas, has been at the forefront of this fast-paced field since he established his practice in 1998. With recent completions such as Rolex Ginza, Coach Ginza, Maison m-i-d and Refa's home in Tokyo under his belt, the creative is a deft hand at crafting mesmerising and personal experiences.

We caught up with Nicolas to find out more about where the world of retail architecture is heading; its present and future, challenges and opportunities.

Wallpaper*: You have been working in luxury fashion and lifestyle interiors for a big part of your career. How do you feel the landscape has changed over that time?

Gwenael Nicolas: It is a fascinating time, as all interior typologies are undergoing a shift - a constant spinning and redefinition. The retail world is seeking a more intimate relationship with the customer, taking inspiration from hospitality: stores become cafés, lounges, and social spaces. In parallel, hotels are seeking more inspiring, emotion-driven environments like fashion boutiques.

This crossover explains why I was asked to design the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Mayfair, London, following our work on several stores in the area, including Fendi, Dolce & Gabbana, and Tod’s. It is an interesting evolution, but driven less by creatives and more by marketing communication. This is why I am particularly interested in creative approaches that redefine typologies - that experiment without directly referencing existing models and instead introduce surprising and unexpected ideas.

The retail landscape in Asia — particularly in Japan, South Korea, and China — is especially inspiring: deeply rooted in cultural references, yet continuously producing strong, memorable, and experimental spaces. So, the next move will be a hotel brand or a fashion brand that creates its own world — not just through a typology shift, but through a true paradigm shift. In a way, it takes a more cinematographic approach, where customers become the actors of a play, orchestrated by the designer.

W*: Can you give me an example of a recent project where you applied something different – perhaps a new approach, material or way of thinking?

GN: I created a space for a Japanese fashion brand called 'm-i-d.' It is a concept store inside a department store in Osaka. I was inspired by Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, who guides the team for each collection with a keyword that is implemented through the entire project. The keyword was 'lighthouse,' serving as a source of inspiration and guidance for the project.

Currently, local brands are not supported by the department store, as the priority is given to international brands. I wanted to create a strong impact, so I created a lighthouse – an interior entirely created with shades of yellow. We developed 20 new materials for floors, walls, and ceilings to create a really immersive, almost surreal environment.

In Japan, yellow is considered the colour of insanity, thanks to Van Gogh. It was very provocative, but it created a shockwave for the brand.

W*: How do you develop your response to a brief?

GN: Curiosity is an atelier more than a design consultant. Every new project begins with a conversation – an exchange of mutual intentions and ideas. The 'brief' does not really exist, per se, between myself and the client. Instead, what emerges is a mapping of possibilities, developed through interaction and the sharing of ideas.

This approach requires that I study the client’s dynamics in advance: their brand identity, communication, digital output, media messages and overall positioning prior to any discussion. The point is that research should happen before the conversation—first, as a form of respect for the client’s work, and second, to ensure the discussion is about what comes next, and engage the discussion with existing ideas and intentions that the client will react to, saving a lot of time.

W*: Tell us more about your most recent Rolex project.

GN: When Rolex wanted to develop the Ginza store, Japan was looking to explore the brand’s customer experience and reinforce its recognition. The brief was defined by a very precise and specific program, more than a brief, along with the freedom to explore Rolex codes into new territories. This approach led to the creation of a series of sequences and a strong narrative.

Ginza is a highly international context, so the facade itself becomes an experiment in connecting with passers-by. To create this connection, I designed an angled facade that allows viewers to see inside without reflection, presenting the products clearly—like a series of framed sequences.

The sense of locality is expressed through the detailing and tactility of the interior features, and through the re-interpretation of Rolex codes in collaboration with Japanese craft artists such as Hosoo and Design Tochi from Kyoto. We challenged traditional metal mesh finishes, usually used for kimono obi, by incorporating them into the façade glass.

We pushed the brand’s icons and elements into a minimalist and dynamic space: an all-green bar and VIP room, multi-layered semi-transparent interiors, and a digital theatre with a 360-degree film, where visitors can walk within the images that surround them.

W*: Can you elaborate a bit on the brief and design solution for your most recent Coach space?

GN: The Coach new store concept process was a rich conversation with Stuart Vevers, the creative director of Coach, who has a very strong and clear vision of what the brand should be. His sensitivity to materials, clarity of communication, and creativity were deeply inspiring.

Coach is a brand that is highly active in the digital world, successfully connecting with the Gen Z generation. The dynamism and speed of its visuals, as well as the relevance of timing in relation to product offerings, are remarkable. The challenge was to conceive a store as a relevant, timeless canvas where products are constantly presented and renewed.

I wanted to shift the focus from a pure store concept to an exercise in branding. I proposed the creation of a new icon that would synthesise all the values of Coach through a large-scale sculpture. This approach removes almost all logos and visual noise from the facade, replacing them with a large metallic cladding that evokes liquid leather, framing a floating 'c' sculpture made of fibre and paper. This icon has also been implemented in new stores in Dubai, Macao, and Kyoto.

W*: What is the retail interiors world's most pressing challenge right now? Why, and what are your thoughts in terms of overcoming it?

GN: Covid profoundly shifted the way we communicate and explain space and design logic through different media – models, live meetings and digital platforms – as digital communication has become the new norm. The image has become more important than the actual experience – more pleasing, more immediate, more satisfying.

Yet the translation of a vision into a multi-sensorial experience, whether complex or minimalist, involves a multiplicity of layers that are almost impossible to convey through images alone. The most inspiring and relevant spaces are often nearly impossible to visualise, and sometimes even to photograph.

This creates an interesting situation where there is often confusion between the dynamics of image-making and the reality of creating space. The notion of time becomes critical: is the project a pop-up for a few days or weeks, or a long-term intervention? This lack of clarity can lead to confusion - and to an overconsumption of materials, energy and effort for ephemeral effects. The acceleration of image production influences other creative fields, blurring the boundaries between what should be permanent and what should remain ephemeral.

The long-term vision is, to me, far more compelling. As Yohji Yamamoto once said: 'How can something be new enough and timeless forever?'

W*: What excites you about the future in the realm? What comes next?

GN: I am excited to witness the shift in the designer’s role in the process and development of projects. It is clear that the world is seeking new ideas—not just evolution, but true re-evolution. The designer becomes more of an initiator.

Clients now come to Curiosity to understand what is happening in the world and what is possible. This requires us to be curious about everything – from technology to craft, graphic design, space, and construction – maintaining a strong local network while also connecting beyond borders. The world is vast but easily accessible; it demands constant effort, research, and experimentation.

Tree stumps. Public benches. Swaying treetops. A worker and his bandsaw. Heavy machinery. And five animal spirits preserving the soul of a forest – from a jumping deer to a curious fox.

'A Tree' is a new project in Japan that journeys through a raft of creative perspectives – from the technical and the functional to the otherworldly magical – bringing to life a new series of objects crafted in cedarwood from ancient forests.

Six designers – Siin Siin from Japan, South Korean studio Kuo Duo, Fabien Cappello, working from Mexico, plus London-based creatives Rio Kobayashi, Max Lamb and Faye Toogood – travelled to the deep forests of Yoshino in Nara Prefecture, to explore its centuries-old forestry history and communities, cultivation technology and making practices.

Six designers working with Yoshino Cedarwood

Each creative was given a tree to transform. The end results, from chairs to benches, are now displayed at Ginza Six retail complex in Tokyo, scattered in public spaces to enhance interaction between visitors and objects, forest and city.

Helming the project, architect Keisuke Nakamura of Daikei Mills tells Wallpaper*: 'Following a project I undertook in the Yoshino area three years ago, I became acquainted with the local forestry industry. Whilst I came to appreciate the depth of Yoshino cedar and its significance as a material unique to Japan, I also became aware of the challenges facing the forestry sector –and felt a sense of responsibility as a creator to become more deeply involved.'

Highlighting the connective thread between the designers, he adds: 'They are all creators who, in their craft, demonstrate a passion for exploring materials, place great importance on the creative process and show respect for everyone involved in a project.'

Over the past 500 years, cedarwood from Yoshino, known as Yoshino sugi, has become a near-sacred byword for quality wood manufacturing in Japan, shaping countless spaces and objects, from temples, shrines and residences to sake barrels and bathtubs.

Meticulously cultivated using an ancient plantation technique, Yoshino sugi is used widely among architects, designers and artisans, due to its straight grain, minimal knots, lightweight strength and distinct forest-fresh aroma.

A growing furniture collection

The project collaborated with two timber specialists Houei Forestry and Ohtani Wood in Yoshino, while the works were produced by E&Y. Creations by Lamb and Toogood recently joined the collection, as the second phase of the series.

For Lamb, witnessing the meticulous technical mastery of 'one man and his machine' during his visit into the heart of the forest inspired his sculptural series Cedar is a Soft Wood. As he explains: 'It begins and ends with a tree. In the middle there is Ohtani-san and his bandsaw. Nothing else. What can Ohtani-san do with his bandsaw?'

Toogood tapped into the spiritual depth of the forest and Japan’s innate respect for the natural world – expressed through the magical realism-inflected storytelling of five animal 'spirits'. Timeless and playful, the forest was reimagined in watercolour paintings, poems and eventually five seating sculptures crafted from a single 25m high tree.

Shaped by a primitive simplicity, 'Five Spirits, One Sugi' includes the flowing lightness of The Deer, the rhythmic form of The Woodpecker, the earthy curves of The Toad, the diagonal edges of The Fox and the warm solidity of The Bear.

'My pieces started with a very spiritual response to the forest,' she explains. 'I came back and in my journal, I wrote a poem and did some watercolours of the animals that I'd seen. It was not just my experience in the forest that I wanted to represent – but also the fact that this forest is a habitat for all these beautiful animals.

'Having that context with nature is so important to my work and something I want to bring into a commercial environment. I think that feeling of nature is not only coming through from the material, but also the way you view the shapes. I brought the animals into the furniture – the big bear, the jumping deer – they are all there. For me, it was about trying to let those animals live through the wood and the furniture.'

The full A Tree collection, currently on display at Ginza Six, also includes creations completed last autumn for phase one of the project. Fabien Cappello designed a bench that transforms the act of seating into a shared and public experience, inspired by common typologies found in airports, bus stations and waiting areas. As he explains: 'It explores the questions: can a single tree be transformed to comfortably seat many people, and how to foster comfort and invitation in public seating.'

Ideas of inversion, movement and cultural reinterpretation are written into 'Edisni tuo', a furniture series by Japanese-Austrian designer Rio Kobayashi. One of his first projects to take shape in Japan, having spent more than half his life overseas, the pieces mark a reframing of his perspective of home; 'like inside-out sushi, a Western twist on a Japanese dish'. Added to the mix is an unexpected 'wobble' – inspired by the movement of treetops in the wind.

'The pieces invert what is expected,' he says. 'Bark is kept, cut surfaces are exposed and what’s usually discarded becomes essential.'

For Siin Siin, the starting point was creating a dialogue between material and technique – with traces of splitting wood by axe combined with stainless steel joints inspired by heavy machinery. Meanwhile, Kuo Duo dreamt up Kiri Kabu, a reinterpretation of tree stumps, balancing the material contrast of pale heartwood and rich sapwood. The tree was dissected into a puzzle of nine sections: four corner pieces reassembled to create a cylindrical base, before being turned on a lathe to form a conical form, while the remaining parts were used for structural elements such as seats and backrests.

And just like the life of a forest, the project will continue to evolve. The collections are displayed at Ginza Six until autumn, with a final, as yet undisclosed, phase due to unfold over the coming year.

If there’s one thing that Wallpaper* does well, it’s houses – spotlighting architecturally arresting gems from around the globe and spanning the spectrum of modern design. Our inboxes are overflowing with news of the world’s most boundary-pushing architectural projects, and we strive to bring you the very best.

To ensure you don’t miss a thing – and to showcase the scope of residential architecture today – we’ve launched a monthly series: The Architecture Edit. Each instalment will highlight our favourite houses of the month: buildings that demonstrate creative planning, innovative methods and, of course, aesthetic excellence. Here are the best new houses of March 2026.

A house between mountains

Set between Brazil’s Serra do Mar and Serra da Mantiqueira mountains, Valley House is architect Beatriz Meyer’s family home. Built on a rural plateau, the single-storey, horizontal structure is designed to blend into its landscape rather than dominate it. It’s divided into three volumes using glass, stone and carbonised timber, balancing transparency and solidity, while open-plan interiors emphasise light, airflow and connection to nature with pergolas and apertures framing views. The house embodies Meyer’s vision of calm, sustainable living, rooted in place.

Read about it here.

A Gujarat behemoth

Amaltash, a 12,000 sq ft home in Navsari, India, combines technical precision with cultural meaning. Designed by Veeram Shah, it embodies Le Corbusier’s idea of the home as both a ‘machine for living’ and a space rich in symbolic meaning. Climate-responsive design drives its form, with solar strategies shaping layout, patios cooling interiors, and large windows – the house operates as a micro-ecosystem, with rainwater harvesting and greenery replacing lawns. At the same time, it draws on Gujarati traditions. Crafted with local materials and artisan collaborations, Amaltash merges sustainability and heritage.

Read about it here.

A Canadian forest retreat

Nestled in British Columbia’s Coast Mountains, the Passive House Forest Retreat is a highly sustainable home designed to rigorous environmental standards. Its treehouse-like structure sits lightly on a forested slope, featuring a cantilevered volume that frames expansive views while creating a sheltered space below. Dark cladding and natural materials allow it to blend with its surroundings, while precise construction ensures top-tier energy performance. Interiors, meanwhile, complement the architecture with refined detailing and sculptural lighting.

Read about it here.

An unusual floorplan

Trim House in Vilnius, Lithuania, is a striking triangular residence shaped by unexpected planning restrictions. Originally designed larger, the project was reduced by 40 per cent after new regulations limited building size. Rather than compromise, architect Robert Konieczny reimagined the design into a compact, angular form centred around a courtyard. A spiral staircase leads to upper-level bedrooms and a terrace, while expanded outdoor space improves daylight and connection to the surroundings. The enforced ‘trimming' ultimately enhanced the project, proving constraints can inspire innovative architectural solutions.

Read about it here.

A modernist landmark

Designed in 1946 by Rudolph Schindler, the Kallis-Sharlin Residence is a modernist hillside home in Los Angeles. Built into a slope overlooking the San Fernando Valley, its layered volumes, terraces and glass walls blur indoor and outdoor boundaries, and distinctive features include a butterfly roof, clerestory lighting and rich materials like mahogany and Douglas fir. Recently restored and listed for sale at $6.35 million, this cultural monument stands as a lasting example of a modernist architecture that harmonises innovation, landscape and human experience.

Read about it here.

A bright red villa

Villa Jevany in the Czech Republic boldly contrasts its forest setting with a vivid red façade. Designed by Architektura, the house intentionally stands out rather than blending in, creating a dialogue between man-made form and nature. Built into a sloping site, it appears single-storey from the road but reveals additional levels below. Inside, a central staircase leads to a spacious living area with forest views, while irregular windows reference abstract art. Divided into active and quiet zones, the home balances striking visual identity with functional, family-oriented design.

Read about it here.

A timber house

Orchard House in Cheshire exemplifies thoughtful rural architecture. Designed by Studio Bark under strict UK planning rules, the home demonstrates exceptional design quality while remaining modest and energy-efficient. Its S-shaped plan spans two levels, with living spaces elevated for views across a restored orchard. Timber construction, passive design strategies and local materials reduce environmental impact, including parquet flooring made from a tree on-site. Over time, the house has blended into its landscape, aided by weathered cladding and revived planting, now representing a balance between contemporary, sustainable living and deep connection to place.

Read about it here.

A traditional Kyoto residence

House in Narutaki is a sensitive renovation of a traditional Sukiya-style home in Kyoto by kooo architects. Respecting strict preservation norms, the design maintains the building’s historic character while adapting it for modern living. Original tatami spaces were reconfigured into three flowing zones, including a garden room and connecting passage, while natural materials, sliding doors and handcrafted details preserve cultural authenticity. The result is a calm, minimalist home that honours Japanese tradition while providing a refined, contemporary living experience.

Read about it here.

A Jacques Couëlle-designed home

This organic modernist home near Cannes, originally designed by Jacques Couëlle in the 1960s, has been carefully refreshed by Miriam Frowein Interiors. Distinctive for its sculptural, fluid forms, the house exemplifies Couëlle’s ‘architecture-sculpture’. The renovation respects his vision, using organic shapes, earthy tones and handcrafted elements throughout, as well as mid-century-inspired furnishings to complement rather than compete with the architecture. The design approach allows the building’s expressive form to remain central while enhancing comfort and livability for contemporary use.

Read about it here.

A hidden island escape

Euthea, a house on the Greek island of Meganisi, is designed to disappear into its landscape. Created by Ateno Architecture Studio, it is partially buried and covered by earth, making it nearly invisible from above. As the first structure on its peninsula, the project prioritises minimal environmental impact – built with local stone and earthy tones, it blends seamlessly with its surroundings. Interiors are arranged to frame sea views, enhancing the sense of isolation and immersion in nature. Even functional elements, like a brass drainage pipe, are treated poetically, reinforcing the home’s quiet, thoughtful integration.

Read about it here.

Craft elevates an object. It’s no longer uncommon to find extreme examples of marquetry, embroidery, or lacquer work embedded within a high-end car interior (with prices to match for the additional legwork), and the audio world is also in on the act, via tailored programmes like Bang & Olufsen’s Atelier series and unique editions such as the marquetry-topped R810 MiE Radiogram from Ruark Audio.

This is the Casio S100X-JC1-U, the ‘Japanese Lacquer Edition’ that elevates what the Japanese electronics giant already calls its ‘Premium Luxury calculator’, the standard S100X. But while a standard example of this hefty desktop tabulator will set you back $350, this is one level above.

Casio has sold over a billion calculators since the 1950s, when they were objects the size of desks. The first desktop device didn’t come until 1965 with the 001 and LCD displays were introduced a decade later in the Casio Pocket-LC. The calculator you see here is a form factor that’s been essentially unchanged since the JS-20 model was introduced in 1983.

What sets the S100X Japanese Lacquer Edition apart is the use of traditional Japanese craft. Casio has enlisted master artisans from Yamakyu Japanware in Sabae, Fukui Prefecture, to create new cases for the calculators using layers lacquer.

The process involves tapping and filtering sap from Toxicodendron vernicifluum, the lacquer tree, which is then built up into solid form through the application of layer upon layer of the urishiol-rich sap, which hardens (polymerises) as it dries. Yamakyu has more than 95 years of working with the material, but this was the first time it’s been applied to an industrial product, with black lacquer finished off with red edging.

These high levels of precision pair with Casio’s attention to detail, from the machined aluminium fascia to the mix of subtly convex and concave-faced buttons depending on their function. The hardware itself is made at Yamagata Casio, the facility dedicated to Casio’s most premium products. Other details include laser-engraved serial numbers and a premium foil-stamped presentation box.

Craft is a way of transforming the expected into something fantastic, whether it’s a Smythson Laptop sleeve or an Hermès strap for your Apple Watch Series 11. With the Casio S100X-JC1-U, an executive staple just became a new status symbol.

S100X-JC1-U Japanese Lacquer Edition, Casio.com. The limited edition is sold out and, no surprise, already surfacing on Ebay.

Tina Koyama grew up acutely aware of mortality. Not in a morbid way, she is careful to say, but in the way that makes you ask what actually endures. It is a question she has been sitting with since childhood, and it is, in the most direct sense, why POJ Studio – of Pieces of Japan – exists.

Tina Koyama's life with Japanese craft

Koyama was raised in Switzerland, the daughter of a Swiss architect and a Japanese mother who worked as a craft buyer. She remembers her mother as a woman who, because the family didn't live in Japan, made a conscious effort to bring its influence into daily life. Food was part of it. Language was part of it: Japanese was spoken at home, a decision that would prove professionally decisive later on.

Periodically, there were visits to Japan, which meant visits to workshops. One of those visits – to a bamboo weaver and his wife – never quite left Koyama. The craftsman mentioned, quietly, that he had no successor. She was young and didn't fully register the weight of it. She recently learned he had closed his workshop and died. 'Looking back,' she says, 'it was a glimpse into a world that was already beginning to disappear.'

Koyama went on to study visual communication at the Zurich University of the Arts – historically the place to study design in Switzerland, with roots going back to the Bauhaus – before heading to Tokyo, then eventually to Silicon Valley, where she spent six years at Twitter, leading UX and international design strategy. It was an unlikely detour.

It was also, it turns out, the making of her. 'I don't think I would have had the courage to start POJ Studio if I hadn't lived there,' she says. The scale of ambition she absorbed in the Bay Area, combined with a creeping unease at watching billions of dollars flow into apps while centuries-old craft traditions quietly collapsed for want of a sustainable income model – a contrast that eventually became impossible to ignore.

Pieces of Japan: a fortunate beginning

POJ Studio launched in April 2020 out of a Kyoto machiya, with a single product: a kintsugi kit made with real urushi lacquer, at a time when authentic versions were almost impossible to find. The timing was fortunate as people in lockdown suddenly had the hours required for a slow, demanding repair process. Of course, the thinking behind it was anything but accidental. Koyama had gone looking for the kit after her mother took up kintsugi, and found almost nothing made to proper traditional standards. She cold-called Takuya Tsutsumi, a fourth-generation urushi lacquer refiner. He is now, she says, like family.

That is broadly how POJ works: deep, long-term relationships with artisan families whose practices span generations, developed through trust, word of mouth, and Koyama's own fluency – cultural as much as linguistic – in a world that does not open easily to outsiders.

Preserving craft traditions

The studio now works with more than 20 craft traditions across Japan, from the Tahara family's sashimono woodworking (nail-free joinery, practised since 1877, now producing a modular storage system with POJ) to Masao Kiyoe, a former steel construction worker who retrained after a workplace accident and has spent 47 years natural-dyeing indigo textiles from a workshop on the path up to Kiyomizu Temple. His son Junichi now works alongside him.

Then there is the Ainu noren (or divider, featuring designs of the indigenous Ainu community), hand-stitched in Hokkaido by members of the Kayano family – POJ’s most politically charged collaboration, and deliberately so. 'It feels important,' Koyama says, 'to highlight a culture that predates modern Japanese identity.'

Given the nature of the craft, products are never seasonal and besides, rotating collections would undermine the stable income stream that is the whole point of POJ. Everything ships to over 160 countries, with the US the largest market.

For Koyama, these are busy times. She talks about building 'craft villages’ – ecosystems, not just shops – where younger people can actually envision a life, a family, a future. To that end, a woodworking school has opened in Keihoku; and a pottery residency is planned for Shigaraki in early 2027. A foundation is also in the works.

Clearly, Koyama is playing a very long game. 'The idea of sustainability, for me, isn't only environmental or economic,' she says. 'It's about continuity across generations.' That, ultimately, is her answer to mortality: build something that outlasts you.

For architect Tomoyuki Sakakida of New Material Research Laboratory, the idea of transcending time was elemental in shaping the design of the new Imperial Hotel, Kyoto.

‘Time. This word sums up everything. Over 1,000 years ago, people in Kyoto would watch the moon rise above the mountains from here. We want guests to see the same moon and mountains and feel a sense of continuity. The hotel is a vehicle for going beyond time.’

The 55-room hotel is a dialogue between old and new, reimagining a historic theatre where Kyoto’s geisha, or geiko, once performed, layered with the luxury Japanese hospitality that has defined the Imperial Hotel brand for more than a century.

Wallpaper* checks in at Imperial Hotel, Kyoto

What’s on your doorstep?

The hotel blends into the Gion Kobo Kaburenjo theatre complex – the heart of local geiko culture – and just beyond lies Gion itself: a time-etched townscape of narrow stone lanes, wooden machiya townhouses, tiled rooftops and Higashiyama mountains beyond.

Who is behind the design?

‘Old is new’ is the philosophy of New Material Research Laboratory, an architectural practice founded by Sakakida and artist Hiroshi Sugimoto in Tokyo in 2008 – an idea that deeply aligns with the spirit of Imperial Hotel, Kyoto.

Preservation and innovation are softly harmonised. The restored southwest facade of 90-year-old Yasaka Kaikan remains in place, beneath reconstructed copper-tiled roofing. Countless original elements are woven into the new hotel – from stone pillars and window frames to intricate terracotta reliefs and 16,387 exterior tiles (about a tenth of the total).

Time imprints material surfaces, old and new. At the ancient end of the spectrum, there is the 1,000-year-old zelkova wood signboard at the entrance and a catalogue of primitive Japanese stones and woods destined to age with natural beauty. Hints of Frank Lloyd Wright are also found in geometric motifs and Art Deco lines.

And on the modern side? Interiors are anchored by connective sweeps of a warm matte surface with a softly metallic edge, from elevators to walls. A signature material of the architects, it’s stainless steel with a corroded patina in a new shade called kobishoku – ‘antique colour beauty’ – inspired by a Ming Dynasty plating technique used to make the handles of screens.

Meanwhile, artwork Tobanjan by Sugimoto consists of a dynamic slash of ceramic made by swinging onto its surface the Gibeon meteorite, one of the world’s oldest known materials, dating back over 4 billion years.

Where is the heart of the hotel?

The Executive Lounge, where guests are greeted, resembles an elegant contemporary take on a traditional Japanese home. Beneath a tilted wooden ceiling, a long wall of glass frames horizontal lines of pebbles, jewel-green moss, Tamba rock slabs, cedar bark fencing, bound bamboo, a 16th-century stone wellhead and a small shrine (where staff pray daily) – while momiji maples of a neighbouring geisha residence peek over the back wall.

Inside, polygons – a recurring Art Deco motif – shape the crafted wood furniture and carpet designs, alongside decorative Lloyd Wright-inspired metal columns. The lounge is framed by two time-rooted creations by Sugimoto. Gold and green pine trees on fusuma-e screens on one side; and on the other, a Seascape – a signature monochrome abstraction of seas and skies, shot in 2025 to mark the hotel’s completed construction.

The room to book

Zelkova doors echoing shrine gates mark the thresholds of the Main Building’s modern rooms – enclaves of organic silk walls, cedarwood panels, geometric wood bathroom mirrors, framed textiles by Shinichiro Yoshida of Kyoto gallery Shinmyoan and carpets inspired by Shugakuin Imperial Villa. Views capture a puzzle of Gion rooftops and mountains (thanks to Kyoto officials permitting Yasaka Kaikan’s original 100ft height, in contrast with Gion’s 40ft restriction).

Heritage rooms span the south and west sides of the restored Yasaka Kaikan. Atmospheric spaces are shaped by moss green carpets, original framed windows and bespoke furniture – including lights with dynamic angular forms of patinated stainless steel and washi paper. The Imperial Suite also has a meditative rooftop gazebo – in one corner, a five elements artwork by Shiro Tsujimura sits on an antique smoke-blackened former ceiling panel from Kinkakuji Temple.

A different tempo unfolds in the North Wing, a low-level black timber extension, with eight tatami mat rooms (the first in the Imperial’s history). Immersed in the Gion townscape, shoes are slipped off in cherry wood entrances, leading into crafted tatami, chiselled naguri chestnut and lantern-like lighting alongside low-level beds. ‘The lighting is very important, particularly in the evening,’ explains Sakakida. ‘I wanted to create gentle, subtle, quiet lighting so the hotel and Gion share the same atmosphere.’

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Yasaka – with its mirrored banana leaf artwork from the original Yasaka Kaikan – serves all-day dining, plus deliciously layered Japanese breakfasts in collaboration with Gion restaurant Kawakami. A counter seat at elegant Ren is the place to enjoy a creative dialogue with the seasons, with French cuisine and Japanese precision expressed through quality ingredients, from Awaji seabream to grated caviar.

After dark, head to the Old Imperial Bar, anchored by an ancient jindai keiyaki wood counter, and sip a Mount Hiei, a sweet blend of matcha, yuzu and a hint of nostalgia – a Kyoto nod to the century-old Mount Fuji cocktail at Imperial Hotel, Tokyo.

Where to switch off

Recover from temple fatigue in the cave-like serenity of the basement, swimming laps in the clean-lined blue pool waters, flanked by the raw beauty of vast Kitagi stone boulders (originally used in the façade), alongside fitness facilities. A spa will soon open.

In addition, local experiences range from geiko teahouse visits to doll-painting workshops. As GM Reiko Sakata clearly understands, Gion is a driving force, particularly the estimated 80 okami san women running generations-old teahouses.

The verdict

This is the fourth property in Japan’s Imperial Hotel collection (after Tokyo, Kamikochi and Osaka) and its first opening in around 30 years. It joins the monumental Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, founded in 1890 as a state guesthouse during a seminal moment in Japan’s modernisation. It shaped the nation’s hotel industry and became a playground for experimental design, most famously with its 1923 incarnation by Frank Lloyd Wright.

In Kyoto, this history is written into the hotel’s DNA but expressed in a new way – through its material textures, conceptual artworks, Art Deco accents and deep ties with Gion.

Imperial Hotel Kyoto is located at 289 570 Gionmachi Minamigawa, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto, 605-0074, Japan

This Kyoto home in the ancient capital of Japan might not shout about its contemporary credentials – and rightly so, as this is a historical city with strict preservation rules when it comes to architecture. At the same time, many architects are called to explore upgrading their urban fabric as needs evolve and residents call for the reimagining of their period properties. Such was the case of House in Narutaki, a private residential project recently completed by kooo architects in the city's namesake neighbourhood.

Explore this Kyoto home by kooo architects

The architects were commissioned for the renovation of a traditional Sukiya-style house in the district of Narutaki. The privileged plot meant leafy environs wrapped in historical surroundings, as well as long views of the scenic landscape of western Kyoto (Rakusei). At the same time, a rich, mature garden provides not only a pleasant closer vista, but also a spectacle of colours as the seasons change. It was this vibrant and layered environment that the architecture team was called upon to operate in.

Right from the start, the architects knew they had to respect the existing home's precious architectural character. Sukiya structures were associated with the culturally important Japanese tea ceremonies, and were typically timber constructions using large open spaces and natural materials. The architects sought to implement the same approach with their modern interpretation of the genre, nodding to the past, while refining details and function for the present and future.

The Kyoto home's original tatami rooms – which had, over the years, been tinkered with and altered beyond recognition – were transformed into three, flowing yet distinct spaces. One is an earthen-floored passage that connects the main structure's two wings, as well as links it to a smaller, detached annex. The second space is a generous reception room, and the third is a garden room, created with the sole purpose of allowing the residents to enjoy the serene outdoors.

Local craftspeople and designers worked on perfecting the overall feel through key built-in details throughout. There are fusuma sliding doors by Noda Hanga Studio separating different areas, exposed cherry wood beams, and traditional Juraku plaster on walls and ceilings.

The project's annex is new and contains the main residence, including three guest rooms. Hinoki baths and dappled light through translucent window screens are just some of the elements that make up an ethereal living experience in this property, ensuring it remains connected to the adjacent period building's origins.

ko-oo.jp

If the number of rooms is any indication of just how boutique a hotel is, Tayura, in the heart of Nara, is as boutique as hotels get, with only two rooms to choose from. Both rooms are spacious and come with generous twin queen-size beds. The location in the heart of the old town (Naramachi) could not be better and offers plenty of restaurants, cafés, shops, temples and more in the immediate vicinity to explore.

Wallpaper* checks in at Tayura たゆら, Nara

What’s on your doorstep?

Naramachi is the old town centre of Nara city and is a fun maze of narrow streets lined with beautiful old machiya houses to wander around. While the hotel does not have any on-site F&B (although the ground floor is currently vacant and the owners are looking for a suitable tenant), plenty of options are within walking distance. For your daily caffeine fix, consider Ongaku & Coffee – a stylish listening-style café – or Tabi Coffee Roaster, a tiny, local, takeaway. For a simple lunch, try the local speciality of sushi wrapped in persimmon leaves at Hiraso or amazing buckwheat noodles at Gen. Dinner at Awa, with local produce and local sake, is always amazing and, followed by drinks at Lamp Bar, will make your evening in Nara perfect.

Who’s behind the design?

The hotel is on the first floor of an old two-and-a-half-storey steel structure that had been sitting empty for almost a decade. Local Nara resident Yoshiaki Nagasaka of Hitotomori Architects was commissioned to do the renovation and came up with the simple floor plan, splitting the space into two large guest rooms. ‘I wanted to give the hotel a bit of a Sri Lankan feel, so went with a simple pink-putty finish for the walls, and furniture, doors and windows made of tropical Lauan wood,’ he explains. The high steel ceilings are left exposed, and a very cosy lighting scheme ties the elements together.

The room to book

Besides the comfortable, large queen beds, both rooms come with small kitchens and ensuite bathrooms. We especially love the semi-outdoor bathroom of the larger 66 sq m room. Although it’s a bit chilly in winter! Nagasaka’s clever use of rounded walls and ceiling panels (and of course, the cute pink-putty walls and pink floors) also helps to soften the rather hard shape of the building and create a dreamy atmosphere. Amenities are basic, but the bespoke room wear (made of Sri Lankan cotton) and the thick off-white Japanese hemp bedding add a splash of luxury to the experience.

The verdict

We love the raw and unapologetic interiors and the pink colour-scheme. The rooms are spacious, especially by Japanese standards, and the unusual bathrooms make your stay a fun experience. The location right in the centre of Naramachi is also hard to beat.

Tayura is located at 20 Minamicho, Nara, 630-8873, Japan. Rates: from 49,800JPY

You might expect Shigeru Ban to be a fascinating speaker – the Pritzker prize-winning Japanese architecture master has been working on his own, experimental designs straight out of university in the early 1980s, and is still going strong in the seventh decade of his life. Over the years, Ban perfected building with paper, while experimenting with bamboo and developing a rich portfolio of pro bono work for disaster relief architecture.

What you might, perhaps, not expect is that he is also funny. Speaking to a packed auditorium at the Royal Geographical Society in London earlier this week for the RIBA + LKE Ozolins Lecture 2026, Ban charmed the audience, taking them on a whistle-stop journey across his career, from his more 'conventional' projects, high-profile museum commissions and well-known designs, such as a series of private homes (including Paper House, the first building made of paper to be granted planning permission in Japan) to cultural destinations such as the Centre Pompidou-Metz.

He touched on moments of his career that proved turning points with humour and affection – he smiled remembering the client representative who requested a giraffe in the Nicolas G. Hayek Center, the headquarters of the Swatch Group, in the middle of Tokyo, after having seen the outline of one in Ban's development phase drawings (it was there to showcase the height of the ceiling). He ended up creating a timber giraffe sculpture to satisfy his client for the opening.

This was not the only time he experimented with different spatial formats or materials. Ban has famously spearheaded paper architecture – in particular, building using strong paper tubes, initially inspired by the organic modernism of Finnish architecture master Alvar Aalto and a strong desire to be mindful of the environment and avoid waste. This method has subsequently been used in both private commissions and his disaster relief efforts with consistent success. He has also worked with shipping containers (at a time when few others did–his Nomadic Museum in New York from 2005 is an example), timber, carbon fibre and bamboo.

Through his designs, Ban challenges ideas of temporary building, as many of these projects end up far outliving their predicted life expectancy. 'Even a building made of paper can be permanent if people love it,' he says. 'That is my definition of what is permanent or temporary.'

He probably only half-jokes that the local priest thought he was crazy when he proposed building a church out of paper in 1995 after the existing Kobe community building was destroyed by fire, following an earthquake. Even so, he did just that, and that paper church remained in use for a whole 10 years.

He proposed creating privacy screens to offer spatial separation between different families housed within a single space in emergency shelters after the East Japan earthquake of 2011 in Japan, because 'privacy is a human right,' he emphasises. His paper and fabric partitions proved hugely popular. He is now working on Ukraine's first hospital out of timber, after donating time, labour and equipment to support local communities during the ongoing war in the country. His first disaster shelter designs were used by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Rwanda during the region's 1995 genocide, and he has never stopped working in the field since, completing such projects from Turkey to Sri Lanka and beyond.

'I was always hoping to use my knowledge to help the wider public, not just the privileged,' he recalls of his early years in architecture, and it is a statement he still stands by.

Catching up with Shigeru Ban

We caught up with Shigeru Ban after his lecture to find out more about his current experimentations, what's on his plate and his plans for the future.

Wallpaper*: Your career has always included a lot of experimentation. What excites you today?

Shigeru Ban: I showed today [at the lecture] a project using carbon fibre, [which is a good example of what I am looking at]. So, I'm not only using natural materials in my work, but I'm also interested in this type of high-tech material because there are special characteristics to each material. Bamboo is another example. As you know, there are many architects in Colombia and Indonesia working with bamboo; also, Neil Thomas works with engineered bamboo. But buildings like these can be possible only in a country that doesn't have very strict regulations in terms of the use of the material, because bamboo is such a weak material. When bamboo is exposed to the sun, it cracks very easily, but also its diameter and wall thickness can be very different, so it's very difficult to apply planning regulations when it comes to safety.

W*: Do you feel like regulations might get in the way of experimenting in architecture?

SB: Well, I know that by testing, we can prove anything. The most difficult thing is [tackling] people's prejudices. But testing things can be your hope.

W*: Do you feel there is enough experimentation in architecture today?

SB: No, these days it's more about form-making.

W*: Is there something that you would like to see the architecture world addressing?

SB: Greenwashing is one thing. It is very popular now because people often say, this or that is sustainable, without really understanding what really is sustainable. They think that if they use natural materials, then a building is sustainable, but it's not.

W*: What is on your plate right now, what are you working on?

SB: There is the hospital in Ukraine [the first timber hospital in the country], and I am working on a project in Oman that I am really excited about. I am using mud; I am studying existing technologies of how to apply the material.

W*: You have led a long career that is still going strong. Did you start with a particular vision? What does success look like for you?

SB: Back then, I didn't have a specific goal [of what I wanted to achieve]. I want to develop my own structural system, and I always collaborate with very good structural engineers, including Frei Otto – who was also an architect, of course – and that has trained and educated me. Working with good engineers, even now, for all my timber structures, is important. Those kind collaborations and the training I receive through them is success for me.

Substance is the new monograph from the Japanese master architect Kengo Kuma. Featuring 35 pavilion projects from around the world, it is not only a chronicle of Kuma’s recent work but an exploration of his use of material, in particular wood, bamboo, metal, paper, textile, and stone.

In the pages of ‘Substance’ by Kengo Kuma

The watchword here is integration, and the ways in which Kengo Kuma’s approach brings together traditional Japanese design and construction methods with new technologies.

Since Kengo Kuma & Associates was established in 1990, the firm has overseen everything from the acclaimed V&A outpost in Dundee, with its geologic solidity, to the ephemeral Paper Clouds installation at Somerset House created for the 2025 London Design Biennale.

The book, from Images Publishing, includes projects like the reimagined forest of salvaged timber, Domino 3.0, created for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Wakuni Shoten tobacco store in Tokyo, temples, bridges, pavilions, tents and tea houses, as well as other installations, like the Krug x Kuma pavilion for the champagne brand.

To mark the publication of Substance, Wallpaper* asked Kuma about his experience with craft, technology and innovation in architecture.

An interview with Kengo Kuma

Wallpaper*: Have the technological innovations (CAD, 3D printing and modelling, AI) that have happened during your career changed your approach to design?

Kengo Kuma: Our design is greatly influenced by technology. Fabrication through technology has made architectural possibilities even more organic. Organic architectural design, cost management, and the way we draw plans have all become easier, while evolving our imagination.

W*: In your opinion, how has technology impacted our understanding and application of traditional craft processes?

KK: I believe technology has revealed a flexible attitude and respect for natural materials inherent in traditional human craftsmanship.

W*: Do you think that architecture’s relationship with nature has improved over the past few decades?

KK: I particularly feel that the relationship between architecture and nature has changed dramatically since 2000. The increase in natural disasters has revealed the limitations of modernist architecture represented by concrete and steel and has fostered the awareness that prioritises natural materials as a way for humans to survive.

It has further intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic and, I believe, has had a significant impact on architectural design.

W*: Are there any natural spaces or environments that influence your approach to creating architectural space?

KK: I consider myself an architect particularly sensitive to topography. Whether in urban areas or in nature, I walk around the site and think about what kind of terrain the place is situated on.

W*: Which is more important for architects, a relationship with space, with materials or with technology? Or are they increasingly related?

KK: Space, materials and technology are all indispensable to architecture and are interrelated, but if I must prioritise, it should be materials. By thoroughly studying materials, how the space and the technology should be designed emerges naturally.

Japanese technical-wear brand Goldwin has been making waves in the fashion world, following notable collaborations in 2025 with Comme des Garçons and Our Legacy (a tour of its futuristic Goldwin 0 factory, home to its experimental diffusion line, also hints at its ambition). This year, Goldwin’s ascent continues with the opening of three new stores in London, New York and Seoul. The London flagship, designed by Hiroshi Sugimoto and Tomoyuki Sakakida’s New Material Research Laboratory, is a statement of intent rendered in wood, light and air.

Located on Broadwick Street in Soho, the store’s design is rooted in traditional Japanese craftsmanship, yet acutely attuned to London’s position as a crucible of contemporary culture. The space is imagined as the ‘eye of the vortex’: a generative centre from which new creative currents spiral outward. Circularity underpins the entire concept: layers and rings radiate outward, echoing themes of cycle and flow.

As the team at New Material Research Laboratory explains, the central inspiration was ‘the natural formations of strata, created over an eternity of geological time’. The circle, a spokesperson for the brand adds, is ‘a form that physically anchors the space while symbolically embracing the five great elements of earth, water, fire, wind and void’.

At the heart of the interior stands a ring-shaped yashiro, or sanctuary. Described by New Material Research Laboratory as a ‘shrine-like structure’, it anchors the experience spatially and symbolically. Garments orbit its perimeter, transforming the yashiro into a stage or amphitheatre for Goldwin’s collections, while inviting visitors inward. ‘By positioning the central circular structure as the core of the space and arranging products around it, the entire store operates like a large show window that draws the eyes of passersby,’ says the brand.

Visible through the transparent facade, a digital canvas of 12 LED pillars encircles the yashiro, presenting flickering visuals that reflect seasonal transitions, natural imagery and the work of contemporary artists. ‘This allows the store to establish an identity not as a static environment, but as a living organism whose expression is constantly shifting,’ says New Material Research Laboratory. Within the ring, Akita cedar columns rise like a hushed forest, embodying traditional Japanese aesthetics and offering a serene counterpoint to the bustle of the street outside.

Even the fitting rooms reflect meticulous craftsmanship. Silk panels dyed using the traditional kakishibu method have been treated with persimmon tannin, producing a soft, luminous sakura-iro glow. ‘As a brand originating in Japan, we wanted to subtly infuse the space with a sense of Japanese character by using domestically sourced materials. While the exterior features LED elements, the interior side of the columns uses Akita cedar… [and] the fitting rooms [incorporate] silk crafted in Nanto City, Toyama Prefecture,’ the brand explains.

The result is a store that extends beyond retail. It becomes a ‘landscape’ – one that fuses tradition with innovation and art with technology. Instead of merely being a place to purchase garments, it provides ‘new inspiration and deeper awareness of coexistence’.

Goldwin, 35 Broadwick St, London W1F 0DH

Denizen Works, the UK-based practice known for its floating church in the East End of London, the Haddo Yard housing in Kent and spectacular private houses like Taigh Na Traigh and 100 Acre Wood in Scotland, has completed its first project in Japan.

Discover this new house in Japan by Denizen Works

The House in Onomichi is notably more restrained and modest in scale than much of the studio’s UK-based residential work, drawing on the region’s vernacular architecture and materials. The firm describes the project as a ‘low-impact, reduced material construction’, adding that ‘it’s an important element in our search for low emission designs for living’.

The clients chose the site for its clear distinctions from their previous life in London. They wished to be closer to nature, and the house has views across the Seto Inland Sea to the Setonai islands, surrounded by a simple garden that ties it into the surrounding vegetation.

The main house, or Omoya, is paired with an annexe, or Hanare (a word meaning a detached cottage). The latter houses a ceramics studio, with the space between the two designated as a covered transition zone akin to a traditional dirt-floored Doma. The structure sits on a slightly raised concrete plinth, with walls of Yakisugi burnt cedar cladding contrasting with the joinery details of the exposed rafters above.

On the ground floor of the main house is the entrance hallway and primary bedroom, along with utility area, WC and bathroom. A staircase leads up to the open plan kitchen, dining and living space, with large windows providing views to the Seto Sea and the surrounding landscape.

The room features a high ceiling that reaches up into the pitch of the roof, with the house’s orientation ensuring the two principal windows follow the path of the sun throughout the day (minimising the need for artificial lighting).

As Murray Kerr and Yuto Fujii of Denizen Works note, ‘[the] windows are placed to frame views from both a western seat height and from sitting on the floor... it helps give a slightly eccentric look to the otherwise extremely simple exterior'.

Hiroshima-based Take Architects collaborated with Denizen on the construction process, ensuring that materials and labour were locally sourced along with overseeing the earthquake-proofing elements of the design.

DenizenWorks.com

Also read: The Japanese house offers lessons in living for everyone