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Arima Guesthouse Japan

Japanese Guesthouse – design by Tetsuya Matsui + Tomoko Murata, UZU in Japan

20 Apr 2009

Guesthouse in Arima

Location: Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

2008

Design: Tetsuya Matsui + Tomoko Murata, UZU

Photographs : Akiyoshi Fukuzawa

It is located at the corner of the street, where a prostitute is said to live long years ago, in an old spring hot resort “Arima”. Forty five years have passed since this renovated common house was built after the Second World War. It features tiled roofs, mortar outside walls, bases of clay walls, plaster walls with cotton-wool fiber and glass sliding screens with wooden frame. Big and old maple trees in the neighbours are growing at the approach. At night stars shine over the trees.

Our client provides it as a personal guest house for his many friends in other countries. We would like the guests to relax in the atmosphere with history and nature in this place to keep a structure of the former Japanese residence.

We left wooden poles and removed ceiling boards to show the existing structure such as wall bases in the ceiling without drastic change of shape and painted dirty and cracked walls as if they put on light makeup, leaving the feeling of original materials. At last we softly installed nets made of linen with light and shadow generating there on the wooden poles and at the back of paper sliding screens.

We adjust the old style to the new style, and appreciate the harmony. We wanted to express something like the trace of prostitute who turned into the breeze rustling maple leaves many years later.