HOTEL TSUBAKI-KAN WEST WING Renovation

Since designing the guest-floor carpets in 2017, we have been involved in every one of the small, year-by-year updates that Hotel Tsubakikan in Dogo Onsen has made to its building. This project is one of the larger in that ongoing series. While the East Wing and the other floors of the West Wing were renovated one after another, the 19 guest rooms on the 6th and 7th floors of the West Wing remained untouched to the end, and these are the rooms this project addressed.

Before the renovation, most of the rooms were typical hot-spring hotel washitsu: a tatami-floored main room paired with a hiro-en, a window-side strip about a meter deep furnished with chairs. The hotel as a whole is conceived as "a hot-spring hotel with a feel of the Meiji era," and in keeping with this, the client asked not for fully Western rooms but for Japanese-Western rooms with a new Japanese atmosphere. Replacing futons with beds, in response to changing sleeping habits, was a given from the start. Rather than relying on the familiar signs of a Japanese room, such as the tokonoma alcove or the low zataku table, we aimed for a minimal setting that conveys a refined, contemporary sense of Japan.

The tatami was removed and the floor laid in a checkerboard of sisal-look flooring that feels pleasant underfoot, while the walls and ceiling are wrapped in a soft texture reminiscent of washi paper. In one corner of the main room is a raised tatami platform of borderless washi tatami, framed by a chamfered timber edge and by indirect lighting set into a lowered ceiling above. It keeps a tatami place where guests can sit or stretch out, and its base holds pull-out futon storage, so the room can sleep up to four. The hiroen by the window was refinished with new flooring laid over the existing floor and became a place to relax, with a washi pendant light and an original table designed for these rooms. Built-in furniture neatly accommodates everything a stay requires: yukata storage, a desk that doubles as a TV stand, and a headboard with integrated lighting and switches. On the 6th floor, the Western-style rooms and the smaller Japanese-style rooms were also converted into twin bedrooms, by reconfiguring partitions and other changes.

Construction took place while the hotel remained in full operation. Through careful coordination with the hotel's reservations department, the work was completed with minimal impact on operations. Since the renovation, the rooms have been performing well, with steady occupancy and a higher average room rate.