Hoshinoya Kyoto and Hoshinoya Tokyo: One Architect, Two Ways to Reinvent the Ryokan

Hoshino Resorts’ flagship brand, Hoshinoya, has asked the same practice, Azuma Architect & Associates, to design two very different hotels.

Kyoto: the river

Hoshinoya Kyoto opened in 2009 in Arashiyama. It stands on the Oi River in a district that was once a retreat of Heian-period nobles, and is reached by a boat journey of about 15 minutes from the area of the Togetsukyo Bridge, or on foot in about ten minutes from Arashiyama Station. It has 25 rooms, all looking onto the river, in four room types. The project began with a century-old ryokan, which the architect aimed to reinterpret rather than simply renovate.

Tokyo: the tower

Hoshinoya Tokyo, in the Otemachi business district, is a 19-storey tower with 84 rooms, conceived as an urban ryokan. Guests remove their shoes at the entrance, where the reception desk is an elliptical red lacquer counter. Each floor has six rooms along a corridor of tatami, leading to a semi-private tea room, and a hot spring supplies a bath on the roof. The metal lattice of the façade carries a motif taken from kimonos. The materials are chestnut, bamboo and cypress, with paper walls and stone, in vermilion, black and gold, and the lighting glows from behind shoji screens. Our report on the opening is in Hoshinoya Tokyo Opens.

The same idea

Both turn on the rules of the ryokan, which we explain in how a ryokan stay works. The group’s own story is in Hoshino Resorts: How a Karuizawa Ryokan Became a Hotel Group.