SEVEN STORIES

Many hotel rooms are beautifully decorated and disconnected from the mundane city in which they are built. For this reason, we wanted to design a space unique to the place that would connect directly with the city. By designing engawa and shoji screens, which are elements of a traditional Japanese house, we made the guest room look like the outside. The ceiling is mirrored with aluminum foil to make its presence disappear. The shoji screens on the walls are based on the motif of the Mando Festival in Kariya City, Aichi Prefecture, and are made of bamboo and Mino washi paper, just like the actual Manto (a papier-mache doll carried at the festival). The colorful color scheme is based on pixelated photographs of actual Mando, and the colors are reflected on the ceiling and mixed with the urban landscape to abstractly envelop the guest room. The inside (Kariya as a guest room) and the outside (Nagoya as a city) are connected and blend together in this guest room.