Not a Hotel Ishigaki by Sou Fujimoto Architects. Image Courtesy of Sou Fujimoto Architects
Not a Hotel Ishigaki blurs the boundaries between indoors and outdoors with its circular design and meadow-covered roof, appearing from above like a divet in the grass.
Renders of the Sou Fujimoto-designed Ishigaki island property – which will encompass just four bedrooms – show its design follows in the footsteps of his House of Music museum in Budapest, which adopted similarly undulating, circular shapes.
The unbuilt Okinawa hotel is currently still in the concept phase, along with several other Not A Hotel proposals (the hospitality brand is rapidly making a name for itself in Japan, having adopted a crypto-backed NTF membership model that would see architect-designed global houses built by and for its members). Core to Foujimoto’s concept is the free flow of private spaces to the landscape: the grassy terrace is accessed via a pair of apertures that open the building up to the landscape, as well as a small pool.
It is situated to make the most of the nearby ocean views, with the shorefront side of the hotel wrapped in a wall of glass that opens up to the outside. A 12-metre infinity pool similarly looks over the sea, further dissolving the limits between house and landscape.
