Capella Kyoto

Kengo Kuma and Associates drew the four-storey building on the former grounds of Shinmichi Elementary School, one part of a redevelopment along Shinmichi Street that also put up a community centre and rebuilt the Miyagawa-cho Kaburenjo next door. A special permit let the theatre's great roof go back up at its old height, and the karahafu over the stage moved across into the new hall. Timber and light fittings pulled from the school went into Yoi, the late-night kappo restaurant.

Brewin Design Office, working in Japan for the first time, took the machiya's run of narrow alley, hidden garden and interior threshold and stretched it across the whole plan, finishing in hand-washed plaster, cypress, cedar, paper and ceramic. A twisted form modelled on a Shinto shimenawa rope pushes out of one wall of the reception lobby.

Rooms begin at 50 square metres, and the Premier Theatre Rooms take their name from the view of the Kaburenjo. The 206 square metre Capella Suite has the top floor, with the Yasaka Pagoda on the ridge beyond and the laneway to the ochaya below. Six of the 29 suites keep a private onsen bath against an inner garden.

The Kaburenjo has been the private training ground of the district's geiko and maiko for generations, and it opens its front rows to the hotel for the classical arts still taught inside. On the same programme are a wooden sandal atelier of 150 years, where a pair is commissioned and made by hand, and a kintsugi session with an urushi master who mends what is broken into something better than it was. A maiko receives visitors in a private ochaya. That teahouse admits by invitation only.