Hotel Rakuragu
Tokyo, Japan
A new hotel of fourteen rooms on nine floors, standing on about 83 square metres in Nihombashi, central Tokyo, completed in 2023 and opened in March 2024. Rather than facing its windows one way for minimum daylight, the architects read the gaps between the neighbouring buildings and cut balconies out of the white block in a different direction on each floor, some as triangles, some taking the whole frontage. Those cut-outs, lit from inside, are the angled reveals in this picture.
A braced steel frame makes the cut-outs work: the bracing keeps columns off the balconies so nothing blocks the view out, and the columns are slim enough to hide inside the walls of the small rooms. The balconies then sort the rooms themselves, with the biggest ones making the suites. The hotel won an iF Design Award in 2025 and was named one of Dezeen's top ten hotels of 2024.
Kooo Architects
A practice founded in 2015 by Shinya Kojima and Ayaka Kojima, working between offices in Tokyo and Shanghai. The work runs from hotels, sports and commercial buildings and houses down to furniture, lighting and landscape design.
Architecture Kooo Architects (@koooarchitects), for @hotelrakuragu. Photography Keishin Horikoshi. Seen via @archivoolt and @mukacasestudy.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram.
Researched August 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.