Hotel Okura Tokyo’s new main lobby to preserve selected interior themes and decorations

TOKYO – Hotel Okura Co., Ltd. announced that a number of iconic interior themes and decorations long cherished by guests from throughout the world will be reprised in the lobby of the Hotel Okura Tokyo’s new main building, which is due to open in 2019.
 

Decorations from the original facility that will grace the new lobby include the distinctive hexagonal Okura Lantern ceiling lights, lacquered tables and chairs arranged like plum flowers, world map and clock displaying global time zones, and the quietly elegant andon standing paper lamps.
 

The company is also pleased to announce that a number of other decorations will be faithfully reproduced for the new lobby. Specific reproductions will include the hanging wall tapestry Four Petal Flowers, which is a Nishijin-weave silk brocade originally designed by the Japanese human national treasure Kenkichi Tomimoto, as well as shoji paper windows with vertically sliding panels and intricate wooden-lattice motifs.
 

The mezzanine based on themes in the “Bridge of the Dream” painting also will be painstakingly replicated in the new lobby, as well the ceiling, among many other ways that the hotel is working to carefully preserve its traditional Japanese beauty.
 

Hotel Okura has selected Yoshio Taniguchi as a member of the Okura reconstruction project team. Taniguchi is the designer of the Gallery of the Horyuji Treasures at the Tokyo National Museum and the son of modernism architect Yoshiro Taniguchi, who designed the original Okura main building.
 

“The Okura reconstruction will be a close, collaborative work by a team of designers, just like when the hotel was first constructed,” said Taniguchi. “As a member of the Okura reconstruction team, I am committed to continuing the over-50-year legacy of the hotel and designing a main building that captures the hearts of guests for another 50 or even 100 years. We will reprise the traditional beauty of the old main building matched to modern standards. A signature landmark of the new design will be a plaza enveloped by the main building’s two wings and the Okura Museum of Art.”
 

The Okura reconstruction project, which began in September, will renew the hotel’s 53-year-old main building according to the latest standards for safety, technology and operations, while also preserving the much-loved traditional design and tranquility of the old main building.

 

Photo caption: Rendition of Hotel Okura Tokyo’s new main lobby. (Graphic: Business Wire)