Suppose Design Office has transformed an old reinforced building built in the 1980s into Hotel Sou, a three-room hotel located on Fukue Island, the largest island in the southern tip of the Goto Islands, located in the west of Nagasaki Prefecture. By removing the finishes from the building and cutting out the openings in a sculptural, irregular way, I was able to blur the boundaries between inside and outside.
Hotel Sou is located in a lively area of Fukue Island, with a coffee shop next to it and restaurants and shopping streets around it. The hotel is located near a harbor where you can hear the whistle of a ship, and wherever you are, you can feel the rich nature and unique charm of the island. It is a small island that has prospered through the mixing of various foreign cultures through trade since ancient times.
“The idea was not to create something new, but to coexist in harmony with what was there,” says Suppose Design Office. Sculptural openings cut in an irregular way blur the boundaries between inside and outside, while lush vegetation takes over the entire building. “We tried to create a contrast between the decadent beauty and the solid interior finishes, the strong and rough expression of the building frame, and the natural materials such as rattan and sisal,” concludes the Japanese studio.
