An old hotel was renovated and reopened as CLASKA in Meguro, Tokyo September 2003.
For the project, we were approached to design 3 rooms for long-term guests. Part of the project brief was to include in each room an AIBO, a pet robot produced by Sony, and artwork by Japanese contemporary artists.
The first step in the design process was to focus on all necessary items in the room including artwork, AIBO, room furniture and guest’s belongings. Since they are of all different sizes and shapes, we proposed to use a piece of thin wall with some laser cut holes as a TEMPLATE to display these items. This gives the room its function and design concept.
As for making functional rooms, we must make guests feel comfortable even in such a small space (18m2). Therefore, we concentrated most of the necessary function in the wall. For example, most lights in the room are indirect lights from the wall. Also furniture such as a closet, desk and chair were built-in the wall. Guests get most of their things done with minimum movement by dealing with one wall.
In the rooms, people tend to think that Artwork and AIBO are special objects rather then their belongings or furniture. As a design concept, through the process of displaying items on the wall, we hope that guests start to realize the importance of each item. Moreover, when you turn your attention from holes in shape of objects to the entire wall, you will realize the wall is like a TEMPLATE and it decides the space.

all photographs by DAICI  ANO