Kyoto Architecture Through Its Hotels: Kengo Kuma, a 1926 Exchange and a Rebuilt Ryokan

Kengo Kuma and the Kyoto grain

Kengo Kuma has shaped three of the city’s recent hotels, and each reads the surrounding Kyoto differently. Ace Hotel Kyoto fills the red-brick Shin-Puh-Kan, a 1926 telephone exchange by Tetsuro Yoshida, arranging rooms behind gridded wooden frames around a courtyard of plants and water.

Capella Kyoto sits in the geiko district beside Kennin-ji, on the site of an old primary school. Interiors by Brewin Design Office follow the machiya idea of a gradual sequence from public to private, with plaster, timber and shoji. Banyan Tree Higashiyama Kyoto is the wooded counterpart near Kiyomizu-dera, with a triple-height lobby, a suspended bamboo sculpture and a Noh stage.

Old buildings, new uses

Imperial Hotel, Kyoto occupies the restored 1936 Yasaka Kaikan on Hanamikoji in Gion, a building whose public identity predates the hotel by decades. Hotel The Mitsui Kyoto stands on the Mitsui family’s former Kyoto estate opposite Nijo Castle, with a thermal spring spa.

Park Hyatt Kyoto shares its site with the 1877 ryotei Kyoyamato, so a stay can include a meal in a building older than the hotel.

A river ryokan

Hoshinoya Kyoto is the most atmospheric of the group. Architect Rie Azuma restored wooden buildings more than a century old on the bank of the Oi River in Arashiyama, and guests arrive from a lounge at the end of the Togetsukyo bridge by a short private boat ride. It is a good place to see how a ryokan can be rethought without losing its quiet.

How to read them

A useful way to compare the hotels is by what they keep: Ace retains a façade and a structure, Capella a site and a streetscape, Imperial a hall, Hoshinoya a village of wooden houses. The city’s old fabric has become the brief rather than the obstacle.

Sources: Dezeen: Ace Hotel Kyoto; Dezeen: Capella Kyoto; Galerie: Banyan Tree Higashiyama Kyoto; Yolo Journal: Hoshinoya Kyoto. Check the official websites for current information.