Prize(s) Honorable Mentions
Lighting Design/Product Company Illumination of City Environment
Lead Designers Masanobu Takeishi, Tatsuro Sasaki
Architecture Company Tatsuro Sasaki Architects
Client Hoshino Resorts Inc.
Photo Credits Nacása & Partners Inc.
Completion Date April 2023
Project Location Kumamoto, Japan
Entry DescriptionThis concept hotel offers guests an opportunity to experience the town’s charms during their stay. Staff carefully research the town's distinctive attractions, providing guests with valuable information. Located in an area steeped in around Kumamoto Castle, evoking a historical atmosphere. So that the location, the hotel's interior plan reflects the castle's imagery.
The 1st floor hotel entrance interior is a gravel floor resemble the castle. Lighting was planned to express sunlight through leaves, evoking an outdoor atmosphere. In the public space on the 3rd floor used as a reception, benches with different height imagine of kuruwa, the vallum of the Castle, and plants growing in Kumamoto are planned to sextend outwards to draw in the bustle of the city below and connect the inside and outside of the hotel.The lighting mixes interior and exterior methods and expressions to blur the boundary between inside and outside. Also, a light control system enabling lighting scenes based on the time of day, aiming to reduce electricity usage at night and create a light environment that aspects that vary from day to night. In the guest rooms, due to the limitation on the number of light control circuits, a plan was made to balance day and night by using a unified circuit to minimize the number of circuits with indirect lighting and using on/off circuits for other room lights for each use.
Sustainability ApproachFour scenes were created for the entire hotel: daytime, after-sunset, nighttime, and late- night. Energy was reduced by setting scenes according to the time of day, such as reducing the overall brightness at night. The exterior of the hotel was not lit up, but rather the light leaking from the guest rooms was used to create the nightscape as it is. The lighting plan was designed to be close to the local community, just like the hotel's concept of connecting guests with the charm of the local area.
