The natural: Robert Cheng of Brewin Design Office on designing Capella Kyoto

Since Capella Hotels and Brewin are both Singapore-founded, did that shared context change how the brief was interpreted?

Working with Capella out of Singapore made the process direct and convenient; we met frequently. There is also a longstanding relationship underpinning this: I have known the hotel brand’s vice-chairman, Evan Kwee, for over four decades, and worked with him closely for more than 14 years.

The brief grew out of Capella’s service ethos and our own familiarity with Japan’s cultural and aesthetic sensibilities, and how an Asian/Southeast Asian audience would experience the hotel differently from an American or European one.

In Kyoto’s already refined culture around Japanese cuisine, we introduced something complementary: SoNoMa by SingleThread, with its North American roots and contemporary Japanese expression.

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Kyoto has very specific expectations around craft and material honesty. How did that bear on the sourcing and specification decisions?

This was a large-scale hotel, and from the outset we understood it could not be crafted with the same intimacy as a single machiya. Instead, we carried that sensibility through in a more disciplined, repeatable way: the millwork balances solid timber with veneers, with careful attention to grain selection, panel proportions and joinery, while fine timber edges and authentic washi paper, particularly in the bathroom partitions, were approached with precision.

A key intention was to integrate traditional craftsmanship with contemporary artistic voices. All the guestroom headboards are custom pieces developed with Kyoto-based textile house Hosoo. We integrated woven artworks into the headboards, some featuring calligraphic interpretations of the four seasons drawn from Zen rock gardens, others carrying the phrase saza kissa—a reference to sitting quietly over tea.

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How did the site’s history inform the wider interior decisions?

The history of the site was understood not just as a former elementary school, but through its position between the existing Kenninji Temple and the maiko school in Miyagawa-cho. That proximity to a place of worship and a place of performance offered a very particular context to work within. The presence of Kenninji Temple informed the atmosphere we were trying to create: a certain calm, a sense of quiet progression.

This influenced how the hotel is organised, in the sequence of spaces, the layering of thresholds, and the pacing of the journey, where each transition allows you to settle before the next. Being adjacent to the Kaburenjo Theatre and the geisha school, too, there was an opportunity to think of the hotel as part of a wider cultural fabric.

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What does the project ask of a guest that a more conventional luxury hotel doesn’t?

It asks for a different pace of engagement: the experience unfolds through transitions and pauses; the process of arrival is gradual. The hotel is intentionally inwards-looking. This expression of luxury is built through small calibrations: sightlines controlled, proportions carefully measured, the weight of a door or movement of a screen considered. In Kyoto, the most memorable spaces are defined by how they are experienced and remembered. The intention was an environment that is deeply sensorial, where the experience stays with the guest as a feeling rather than an image.

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