Mitsui Garden Hotel Osaka by STGK

Kanagawa Prefecture-based landscape design firm STGK (Studio Gen Kumagai) created the hotel’s gardens with an eye to both its location in the midst of high-rise offices, and the fact that hotel guests would be looking down on it from above. Seasonal plant leaves and flowers are set aside the food to emphasize the seasonal sensation in a very subtle manner. For the Japanese, admiring the changing season is a ritual celebration in their daily lives. Such ritual celebration can be seen in Japanese garden, Ikebana (floral art), and seasonal word in Haiku, etc.

In the garden, cherry blossoms which informs the advent of spring are ‘arranged’ in steel vases, rather than just ‘planted’ within the planted zone. In Japan, there are more than 600 different species of cherry blossom, and in this garden each different species of cherry blossom are carefully selected and planted. Other trees are also carefully selected in order to visualize move in nature, such as wind and sunlight through swinging leaves and flowers.

Along with this Ikebana-like planting, STGK designed the pavement by re-constructing the traditional japanese pattern. The random checked pattern is applied for the entire pavement and the plantation zoning. It has made the garden look modern yet traditional.

Capturing the fineness of nature and tradition in Japanese culture and  re-interpreting them in present time has resulted in the expressing of the hotel’s fine hospitality.