Hotel Screen – its very name is redolent of both the iconic Japanese room divider and the latticework architecture of Kyoto’s storefronts.
When visitors to Japan have had enough of Harajuku’s goth girls and Akihabara’s geek boys, they get on the next bullet train bound for the “real” Nippon. In the old capital of Kyoto, they find a city whose modern bustle quickly gives way to a lush riverside “philosopher’s path,” a still-flourishing geisha district, and seemingly a thousand golden temples.
Soon, they stumble upon tiny storefronts displaying intricately painted fans, freshly woven tatami mats, and impossibly gleaming lacquered bowls — all handcrafted right on the premises. Kyoto has a long and rich history as the seat of fine Japanese decorative arts. It makes sense, then, that a new boutique hotel has turned to today’s contemporary artisans for inspiration.
At Hotel Screen — its very name is redolent of both the iconic Japanese room divider and the latticework architecture of Kyoto’s storefronts — 13 designers attempt to peel back those layers to get at the core of what can be a frustratingly hidden metropolis. Not all of them are Japanese, nor are they all interior designers. Each one, though, comes armed with the notion of using design to transmit mood and ideas — and with a determination to crack the shell of Kyoto.
Milanese architect Salvatore Barbiera, for example, covers a wall in a stylized pattern meant to evoke a sun-dappled forest, and subsequently a place of healing. Another architect, London-based Hikaru Kitai dares guests to confront themselves — literally — by lining her room with mirrors.
photos by JoAnn Greco
The mix of styles, backgrounds, and media is quite deliberate. Conceived as a hotel where guests can indulge not only in luxury and sensuality, but curiosity, Screen aims to eliminate cultural and design borders. It is the vision of designer Takuro Iga who, under the auspices of his firm, Eager, Inc., also designed the hotel’s public spaces — which include a spa, restaurant, rooftop terrace, giftshop, and wedding chapel — in partnership with architect Satoshi Seki.
For the designers who joined him in the project, Iga’s mandate meant experimenting with their own comfort zones. London-based lighting designer, Sam Liu — who is half-English, half-Taiwanese — plays with the quality of light not by using any specific electrical fixtures, but instead by swathing every wall in billowing curtains of opaque white muslin.
Fine artist Dominic Lutringer, a Frenchman based in Osaka, foregoes the reds and yellows of his vibrant acrylic abstracts for a dark blue/grey and satiny white palette, chosen to complement the room’s white furnishings. Another painter, Tetsuei Nakamura — he was born in Tokyo, but has worked and lived in France — pays unabashed homage to the ancient arts of Japan, by installing fusuma (washi paper-covered sliding doors) to separate the bedroom from a sitting area, and uses natural pigments, including gold, to leave a trail of deep purple and white irises that bleed right to the edges of the image.
Located in a quiet residential neighborhood on a block that’s home to a shrine, a few antique stores and Ippodo, Kyoto’s famous tea purveyor, Hotel Screen invites guests to stick close, for after all, the essence of Kyoto is seemingly encapsulated right here. Information: hotel-screen.com
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