More stories

  • in

    Century-old Japanese dwelling transformed into minimalist guesthouse

    Japanese architect Uoya Shigenori stripped back and reconfigured this 100-year-old townhouse in Kyoto to create moody and tranquil interiors for Maana Kamo guesthouse.Located in the historic Higashiyama District, the hotel was designed by Shigenori for Maana Homes, the owner of a collection of luxury retreats hidden within some of the Japanese city’s old streets.

    The main living room inside Maana Kamo guesthouse
    The goal of the renovation was to preserve and expose the dwelling’s original structure while creating a minimalist retreat for quiet contemplation.
    It has been shortlisted for the hotel and short stay interior of the year at the Dezeen Awards 2020.

    Its guestroom can be adapted into a yoga space

    “Preserving and highlighting the house’s imperfectly aged beauty is the backbone of our design philosophy,” said Maana Homes.
    “The beauty and soul of a traditional Japanese townhome is in its structural elements.”

    The kitchen has a central island covered with layers of Urushi
    Prior to the renovation, Maana Kamo was in a poor condition with unsightly vinyl wall coverings, tile ceilings and broken floorboards.
    These finishes were all removed, exposing the old house’s rough, wooden structure and original walls that are made from clay.

    A double vanity features in the new moody bathroom
    These original details have been teamed with dark, moody furnishings and subdued lighting, alongside new timber walls and floors lined with traditional straw tatami mats.
    Ornament is kept to a minimum throughout, while storage spaces for the hotel staff are disguised within the walls.

    Events space opens inside revamped century-old machiya house in Kyoto

    The lack of ornament is to ensure Maana Kamo guesthouse is “visually quiet” and free from distraction, providing occupants with space to slow down and reflect.
    It also allows rooms to be easily adapted, for example, a guest room on the second floor can be quickly converted into a space for yoga and meditation.

    The decoration is limited to a few handcrafted ornaments
    One of the biggest changes Shigenori made to the dwelling was the repositioning of the kitchen from a narrow space at the rear of the dwelling to a larger area at the front.
    This made space for a large kitchen island that is covered with layers of Urushi – a traditional Japanese lacquer made of tree sap that is water-resistant –and a wall of wooden cabinetry and shelves filled with local, handcrafted kitchenware.

    The building’s original structure clay walls are exposed throughout
    Where the old kitchen once stood, Shigenori has inserted a double-vanity bathroom with a shower that overlooks a private garden at the rear of the dwelling.
    The guesthouse is complete with an oversized Japanese-style bathtub that is accessed from the living room. It has a view out to the private garden and is intended to evoke the feeling of bathing in an onsen – a Japanese bathing facility positioned around a hot spring.

    Its old and dark wooden structure has also been revealed throughout
    In 2016, Shigenori collaborated with Masashi Koyama on the restoration of a century-old machiya house in Kyoto to create an events space. Similarly to Maana Kamo, the goal of the design was to celebrate the architecture and history of the space.
    Other projects up for short stay interior of the year at the Dezeen Awards 2020 include the small Escondido Oaxaca Hotel in Mexico by Decada and Carlos Couturier and OHLAB’s extension of a rural hotel in Mallorca.
    Photos are courtesy of Maana Homes.

    Read more: More

  • Esperinos is a design-focused guesthouse in Athens

    Greek designer Stamos Michael mixed his own creations with local artworks and modern furniture classics to form the striking interior of Esperinos, a guesthouse in Athens.Esperinos is situated in the Greek capital’s Filopappos Hill area, taking over a single-storey residence that dates back to the 1930s.

    A number of Stamos Michaels’ furniture designs decorate the house’s living room
    The house used to have a traditionally domestic layout, but when local designer Stamos Michael was brought on board, he decided to knock through all the existing internal walls to form an open, gallery-style space.
    Dotted throughout is a mixture of contemporary and classic furnishings that are meant to give visitors a “new way of experiencing the cultural universe of Athens”.

    A black staircase leads up to the mezzanine

    A few of Michael’s own pieces appear in the guesthouse’s living room. This includes a pine and plywood storage cabinet that’s been handpainted to feature a black-and-white chequer pattern.
    It sits beside one of the designer’s lamps, which comprises two towering, rust-brown columns of powder-coated steel.

    The home’s kitchen is painted a plum-purple hue
    There’s also a sculptural chair by Michael that features a metal pole running through its backrest and a small stool he crafted from two blocks of stone found on a quarry in Tinos, a Greek island in the Aegean sea.
    Guests can relax on a brown-leather edition of Konstantin Grcic’s Traffic lounge chair, or on the sofa at the rear of the room which is dressed with a mismatched array of throw cushions.

    Industrial shelving displays the kitchen crockery
    A doorway looks through to the kitchen, which has been finished with emerald-coloured cabinetry and black, industrial-style shelves that display crockery.

    K-studio’s Perianth Hotel infuses neo-modernism into Athens

    Like the other rooms in the guesthouse, the kitchen has been decorated with a piece of modern art. All the works were curated by local art foundation Grace – founded by Michael in 2016 – and will be regularly changed throughout the year to spotlight different creatives working in the Greek capital.

    The bedroom sits beneath the guesthouse’s timber roof
    The bedroom sits beneath the guesthouse’s pitched wooden roof on a newly constructed mezzanine level, accessed via a set of jet-black stairs.
    Terracotta tiles, similar to those used on the balconies of Greek apartment buildings, have been used to line the staircase landing and one of the steps.
    Surfaces throughout the house have been painted moss green or a rich, plum-purple hue. Michael has also carved out small sections of the walls to reveal the property’s stone structural shell.

    Chairs by Robert Mallet-Stevens feature in the home’s outdoor space
    Guests will also have access to a private back garden that’s dotted with tubular-frame seats by French architect and designer Robert Mallet-Stevens.
    Including an outdoor space in the house was particularly important to Michael, who had heard elderly local residents talk fondly of gathering in gardens and alleyways during the 1960s to listen to music or watch football matches.
    “People were always describing images that reflected a wonderful communal openness,” he told Dezeen.

    The garden is shaded by trees
    Esperinos joins a growing number of contemporary design-focused spots to stay at in Athens, which is largely popular amongst holiday goers for its wealth of ancient landmarks.
    Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte, the owner of Athens’ Carwan Gallery, recently told Dezeen in an interview that the city is emerging as a creative hub, and could even be considered “the new Berlin”.
    “It’s almost like if the city was sleeping for 10 years during the [financial] crisis and is now ready to bloom again,” he added.
    Photography is by Margarita Nikitaki.

    Read more: More

  • The Olive Houses are off-grid retreats hidden in Mallorca's mountains

    Craggy boulders jut through walls in these off-grid guesthouses that architecture studio Mar Plus Ask has built in Mallorca, Spain, for creatives in need of a quiet escape.Tucked away high up in Mallorca’s Tramuntana mountains, The Olive Houses are run year-round by Mar Plus Ask as a silent refuge where solo architects, writers and artists can stay free from interruption.

    The pair of houses are enclosed by a dense grove of thousand-year-old olive trees, which at points is interrupted by huge boulders resembling “natural monumental sculptures”.

    Keen to leave this rugged terrain largely untouched, Mar Plus Ask set about designing two modest structures – one that accommodates sleeping quarters, the other cooking facilities – that look like homes in the surrounding landscape.

    “Our first reaction was that only if we could come up with something that would add something in a respectful and beautiful way, would we ever consider building,” explained the studio, which is led by Mar Vicens and Ask Anker Aistrup.
    “However, it was calming that the functions we were looking to build wouldn’t be much different than those of the existing structures found in the area.”

    One of the houses is partially embedded into an existing stone terrace, which the studio hopes will help the structure keep cool during the warm summer months.
    A sliding teakwood door can be pushed back to reveal a grand arched entrance. Inside, the house has a series of smooth, sloping surfaces similar to those seen within a cave.
    The walls, floor and ceiling have been exclusively rendered in blush-pink stucco, as the studio felt the colour was complementary to the pale green shade seen on the underside of an olive tree leaf.

    A corner of the house has been built around a craggy boulder that the studio left in situ, illuminated by a skylight directly above.
    “To us, the stone became a piece of art – suddenly the house was more about sculpting its backdrop and being its lightbox,” explained the studio.

    Tiny camping pods by Andrea Zittel serve as a creative refuge in the California desert

    Just beside the boulder, an overhead shower has been fitted, while a single bed lies on the other side of the house. Outside there’s also a large sink, the basin of which is formed from rock.

    Mar Plus Ask created the second house by renovating a dilapidated shed on site that was once used to store tools.
    Surfaces throughout are instead covered in deep-purple stucco, a hue that the studio thought was more akin to the dark, glossy topside of an olive leaf.

    The structure was initially deemed too narrow to hold cooking facilities but the studio ended up carving a wide opening into one of its 60-centimetre-thick walls, which is able to accommodate a chunky prep counter and a sink.
    Guests will also have access to two gas burners and a wood-fire oven – water, like that used to service the shower and sink in the first house, is sourced from a nearby spring. This house also includes a toilet.

    Mar Plus Ask was established in 2015 and works between offices in Copenhagen, Berlin, Mallorca and Valencia.
    The studio’s Olive Houses project isn’t the only place where creatives can go to clear their heads. Back in 2016, Andrea Zittel launched Wagon Station Encampment – a campsite near Joshua Tree Park, California, where artists and writers are allowed to play out their “desert fantasy”.
    The site includes 10 sleeping pods, a communal outdoor kitchen and open-air showers.
    Photography is by Piet Albert Goethals.

    Read more: More

  • The Nest at Sossus guesthouse in Namibia features a thatched facade

    South African designer Porky Hefer took cues from the amorphous shape of bird nests to create this off-grid guesthouse on a wildlife reserve in Namibia.The Nest at Sossus guesthouse is situated on the Namib Tsaris Conservancy, a 24,000-hectare reserve nestled between the Nubib and Zaris Mountains in Namibia’s Namib desert.

    It’s been designed by Porky Hefer to emulate the habitat of sociable weavers – a species of bird found in southern Africa known for building huge, bulging nests that are able to accommodate hundreds of birds at a time.

    The four-room guesthouse is an evolution of the nest-like seating nooks that Hefer has created in the past by weaving plant stalks across metal skeletons.

    “I was convinced that my smaller nests were bigger than a chair or a design piece,” said Hefer.
    “I designed these camps with nests all over them and then I tried the idea for three years, changing forms and materials according to the locations I was pitching them,” he continued.
    “People didn’t really get it and preferred four walls and a roof…but I kept on trucking.”

    When Hefer’s unusual accommodation concept was ultimately accepted by the owner of Namib Tsaris Conservancy, Swen Bachran, the designer did a series of hand-drawn sketches to consolidate what The Nest at Sossus would look like.

    Shipwreck Lodge’s wooden cabins evoke ships washed up on Namibia’s Skeleton Coast

    The three-storey guesthouse is completely off-grid and operates off its own supply of water and electricity. Like the nest of a sociable weaver, it swells at different points to form bulbous protrusions.

    Most of the facade is thatched with strands of reed harvested from northern Namibia, supported underneath by a hand-bent steel framework.
    Some walls have been built using rough chunks of granite that have been carefully arranged to emulate the bark of camelthorn trees, which populate the surrounding landscape.

    Walls inside the guesthouse are also thatched, but in some rooms have been set slightly apart from the external shell to allow for the insulation required during the colder months.
    Flooring and joinery throughout are crafted from Rhodesian teak wood.

    Hefer worked alongside his wife, Yelda Bayraktar, and creative consultant Maybe Corpaci to decorate the interiors.
    The trio opted to have the majority of the furniture built-in, much like components are in a nest, and relied on a handful of striking pieces to “bring in the modernism” – for example, the living area is anchored by a sunken Chesterfield-style sofa upholstered in oxblood-coloured leather.

    Outside, a swimming pool for guests has been created in the same space where there was once a dust bath for zebras.
    “The zebras have been known to join guests at the house’s outdoor movie theatre to enjoy the odd movie,” added Hefer, “and surprisingly the local troop of baboons have resorted to observing with interest rather than destroying out of curiosity.”

    Porky Hefer’s self-titled studio has been established since 2011. Prior to that he was running his own creative consultancy,  named Animal Farm. The Nest at Sossus is the designer’s first architectural project, and joins a growing number of design-focused spots to stay at in Namibia.
    Others include Shipwreck Lodge by Nina Maritz Architects, which comprises 10 rooms that are each meant to resemble ruined boats strewn along the sands of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast.
    Photography is by Katinka Bester.

    Read more: More

  • Alfondac is a multifunctional guest apartment in Catalonia with modular fittings

    A modular unit encompasses all the domestic functions of this Catalonian guest apartment by architecture studio Aixopluc, leaving the rest of the floor plan empty for inhabitants to use as they wish. Aixopluc’s Alfondac guest apartment is situated in the Catalonian city of Reus in the Raval de Santa Anna neighbourhood. The 55-square-metre space takes […] More

  • in

    Raúl Sánchez uses clever cutaways in house at Mas Blanch i Jové winery

    Corten steel walls, a circular window and a big cross all feature in this house renovated by Raúl Sánchez Architects for a winery in Catalonia. Called Gallery House, the two-storey property functions as both a guesthouse and gallery for the Mas Blanch i Jové winery in La Pobla de Cérvoles. Barcelona-based Sánchez planned his renovation […] More

  • in

    Nuwa is a micro guesthouse in Seoul with just one room

    Design studio Z_Lab has included a huge porthole window and sunken bath inside this tiny guesthouse in northern Seoul, which measures under 30 square metres. Nuwa is tucked down a narrow alley in Seochon, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Seoul’s Jongno-gu district. The guesthouse takes over a traditional Korean home – otherwise known as […] More