Hakodate Kokusai Hotel

This project was a comprehensive renewal of the interior and exterior finishes of a long-established and historic hotel, which represents the city of Hakodate. It also added a new wing to house more guest rooms, for which we provided overall planning and total design.We adopted a “retro modern” concept, to design the future city of Hakodate while fitting comfortably with its historic street scenery. For the exterior, we chose tiling reminiscent of brick, and Mondrian-style grids, aiming to blend with the street scenery while also unifying the cladding style of the hotel’s disparate buildings. In the interior decor, we united high style with novelty and used techniques in many locations to draw people into extraordinary spaces. Design elements included a hallway-like lobby about 50 m long, ceilings and walls made of corrosion-coated louvers, glazed light walls reminiscent of the tracks of snow, and walls of red travertine in the two-story atrium.