Boutique Design - July/August 2019 - 32

ESCAPIST NARRATIVES across media from film to music to

boutiquedesign.com JULY + AUGUST 2019

2 You spin me round:
circular pieces populating the square volume
of Aiko Yuno's 1993 are
perfectly offbeat.

3 Mizuguchi Guchi's Galápagos Danchi
riffs on the 1950s Japanase apartment
style that's gone from ideal to muchmaligned. This version is a tongue-incheek imagination of what this style
might look like in the late 21st century.

PROJECT PARTICIPANTS
OPERATORS
BnA Inc.
Columbia Works

TANK
TIGA
Sumar Works

DESIGN FIRM
BnA Inc.: Keigo Fukugaki, cofounder and
design director; Mio
Kawai, interior design;
Atsushi Kurosaki,
graphic designer;
Sabrina Suljevic,
amenities buyer

DESIGN
CONSULTANTS
Morita Architectural
Laboratory (architectural advisor and lobby
design); Reiichi Ikeda
Design (room design);
Kanome (room design)

ARCHITECTURE
Toyo Architects and
Engineers Office
GENERAL
CONTRACTOR
ICOS
Kanewa Co. Ltd

ART
EY (BOREDOMS);
Mizuguchi Guchi;
Mina Katsuki; Lulu
Kouno; Daito Manabe
(Rhizomatiks);
Akiyoshi Mishima;
Yusuke Nakano /
Paramodel; Ryuichi

Ohira; Mon Koutaro
Ooyama (#BCTION,
DOPPEL); SHOWKO;
Sai; Sato Sugamoto;
AOKI Takamasa;
Tetsuya Umeda; Aiko
Yuno
ART DIRECTORS
Hiroko Chino; Kenji
Daikoku; Akiyoshi
Mishima; Gaku Ogaki;
Kumiko Sahara;
Satoshi Sakuraoka;
Naoki Takubo; Takefumi Tanaka; Noboru
Tsubaki

KEIGO FUKUGAKI
BnA INC.

COUR TE S Y OF BNA INC . (FUKUGAK I); TOMOOK I K ENGAKU (BNA)

fashion to hotels used to have two things in common. First, they
played to someone's sense of fantasy, from zany pirates to time
travel. Second, they were visual space/time capsules, with no
working controls. BnA Alter Museum, Kyoto, changes that. Instead
of using theming as decoration, this 31-key property makes it the
basis of a business platform. Before you think this is just another
addition to the elite roster of jaw-dropping gallery hotels, it's not.
Guests can check out the "gift shop" for buyable, travel-sized pieces.
There's a full-on gallery space. And, the art isn't just the eye candy in
each room; instead, behind each door is a fully immersive installation, where every touchpoint in the guestroom, from the bed to the
lamping to the ceiling and floor, is part of the masterpiece.
That kind of operational confidence didn't come overnight
for the four-year-old BnA brand. The concept started, far more
modestly, as a collection of artist-designed apartments on Airbnb.
Then the team opened two small projects, both in Tokyo, first in
Koenji and then in Akihabara. These sophomore efforts refined the
concepting of each room and added some limited public spaces,
but were still small (think two or five rooms).
So, for Keigo Fukugaki, BnA's cofounder and in-house design
director, BnA Alter Museum was a first-of-its-kind project. Unsurprisingly, that meant laying down best-practice ground rules that safeguarded both the artists' ability to create freely and the key points of
the guest experience. Each artist develops their concept with one of
the project's art directors; an interior designer is then brought in for
extensive meetings and the process of documenting the design. Bathrooms are standardized under the direction of BnA's in-house design
team. A bar/café/lounge space stands in for a full-service restaurant,
saving square footage in the vertically-oriented 10-story building.
It also helped out with a more common design challenge. "The
toughest part really is budget management," Fukugaki admits.
Other practical challenges are unique to this type of project. For
AOKI takamasa's Traveling Room, that meant figuring out how to
integrate art and sound for a transportive experience of auditory
and visual media. Forget about sterile-looking, sound-deadening
(and eye-roll-inducing) wall panels. This room features floor-toceiling velvet acoustic curtains on all four walls. The artist installed
the four hi-fi speakers at the head of the bed to create optimal
listening in that exact spot. Aiko Yuno's 1993, a cheeky tribute to
love hotels, required incorporating a round bed (clearly not standard issue). At the end of the day, though, Fukugaki points out that
they didn't have to meet the expectations of a conventional hotel.
"Countless hours are spent with the interior designers and the
artists to try and find the right solution to marry hotel functionality and the art experience. But, ultimately, some rooms are less
practical than others," he says. "We believe that those rooms are
sometimes the most well received."
That might sound like a blue-sky statement, but the BnA
concept isn't just a pet project. Tokyo-based investment firm
Columbia Works will develop Alter as one of its brands, via
subsidiary Columbia Hotel & Resorts Co. Surreal still has "real" in
it, and it's time to pay attention. Off-the-wall themes are rapidly
becoming the new black. 

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Boutique Design - July/August 2019

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