STAR

Rebranding a historic hotel as a one of a kind hotel

This is a full renovation of a long-established hotel overlooking the Shirahama hot spring resort town, the most scenic hot spring resort in the Kansai region.
Fifty-five years ago, the hotel was an elegant Western-style hotel loved by the wealthy people of the Kansai region, located near the Shirahama ropeway's summit station building. The hotel's value was to be enhanced when it underwent seismic retrofitting.
In response, we restored the original concept of the hotel as a hilltop small luxury hotel with a view and hot springs as its selling points, and aimed to create a hotel that would be loved for many years to come with infinite views and comfort under the keyword of INFINITO (infinity in Italian).

We created a fictitious story of "a large modern-style mansion planned on a flat prairie by the owner, who is well-traveled and has lived abroad for a long time," and set the perspective of reconsidering the good qualities of Japan in light of life in the West.

While placing importance on an authentic, elegant, and dignified adult atmosphere, we developed a total hotel design that encompassed not only the interior and exterior, but also furniture, interior design, and artwork in accordance with the story, including the use of Japanese hanging scrolls to display ancient botanical paintings from Western natural history inspired by the great local legend, Kumagusu Minakata.

Architecture: teamSTAR ®︎
Creative Director/Architect Eitaro Satake (STAR)
Main Designer Hazuki Tanaka (STAR)
Interior Designer Hiroyuki Okuhara (sola design studio)
Architect Yutaka Shida（verve)