Snøhetta, Jean Nouvel, and Zaha Hadid: Not a Hotel is architecture’s answer to Airbnb

First Zaha Hadid Architects, then Snøhetta, BIG and Jean Nouvel. Many are talking about NOT A HOTEL, yet few are truly clear about the project’s scope and overall vision. The name itself offers a clue: to understand what NOT A HOTEL is, one must start with what it is not. It is not a hotel, not a chain, and not even a real estate operation in the traditional sense. Some describe it as the anti-Airbnb, but that label is reductive. NOT A HOTEL is better understood as a hybrid system that uses architecture as infrastructure, technology as its operating system, and social transformation as its fertile ground.

Born in Japan in 2020 on the initiative of business angel Shinji Hamauzu, the project has grown at a remarkable pace in recent years, reaching more than $372 million in cumulative sales and over a thousand active owners by 2025. Striking figures that should not be read as an anomaly, but rather as a symptom of a broader shift in contemporary ways of living. Much of its success has come from outside Japan and centers on a simple yet radical question: how do we rethink home, travel, work, and mobility when life is no longer anchored to a single place, but distributed across multiple locations?

Shinji Hamauzu, Ceo Not a Hotel

The response comes from some of the leading figures in contemporary architecture. In Okinawa, Zaha Hadid Architects designs a structure lifted above the ground to protect the subtropical forest and follow the coral morphology of the coastline. In Rusutsu, in Hokkaidō, Snøhetta develops a spatial sequence shaped by the site’s topography, with spaces carved into the mountain, volumes suspended toward Mount Yotei, and atmospheric continuities that shift with the seasons. In Setouchi, Bjarke Ingels Group works with a system of angles—90°, 180°, 270°, and 360°—to calibrate views and privacy. Unfired earthen walls are produced from material excavated on site, while photovoltaic roofs reinterpret traditional forms through an energy-conscious lens.

At Yakushima, Jean Nouvel designs an architecture immersed in a forest of thousand-year-old cedars, where glass volumes emerge from the rock like crystals. Masamichi Katayama, meanwhile, focuses on modularity at KITAKARUIZAWA MASU, working with a grid—the masu—that generates variations within an open system, built with near cabinetmaker-like precision in proportions, pillars, and joints. Alongside architects, key figures from visual culture also play a role. With NIGO, NOT A HOTEL TOKYO becomes an extension of his visual universe, combining capsule beds, a sculpture by KAWS, and furniture by Jean Prouvé.

There are three forces behind the emergence of NOT A HOTEL. On one hand, the spread of hybrid work has challenged the distinction between living and traveling; on the other, the crisis of the traditional second home, increasingly seen as rigid and burdensome. Added to this is the rise of a public that wants to inhabit multiple places throughout the year, not out of a nomadic impulse, but through a combination of professional mobility, a search for well-being, and the need for flexibility. These shifts converge around a very concrete need: to experience more places without multiplying infrastructure, management, and costs. In this context, NOT A HOTEL is often read as an implicit response to the gradual erosion of the short-term rental model. In recent years, the “Airbnb effect” has begun to crack under the pressure of stricter regulations in major cities, market saturation, and increasingly uneven quality standards. The promise of feeling “at home anywhere” has frequently translated into an unpredictable experience, while demand grows for spaces that are reliable, curated, and recognizable.

NOT A HOTEL’s early success is therefore sociological, even before it is architectural or technological. The model shifts the idea of ownership toward service and turns the home into a mobile resource: rather than purchasing a place, one acquires a share of use; the digital platform simplifies daily management; architecture defines the identity of the experience.

In addition to the needs that emerged in the post-pandemic period, the Japanese context plays a decisive role in the vision of NOT A HOTEL. In Japan, living has long been understood in terms of use rather than investment. The tradition of ryokan and capsule hotels has fostered an understanding of space as an experience rather than as property to be held onto; similarly, residential architecture is historically modular, light, and permeable, designed to adapt and transform over time. The real estate market reflects this logic as well: buildings rarely accumulate value and are more often replaced than preserved. Added to this are a population already accustomed to multi-local living, an advanced technological ecosystem, and a rapidly growing tourism sector.

Shinji Hamauzu

The model does not simply redefine architecture, but also the way a home is owned and managed. Units—villas, apartments, retreats embedded in the landscape—are acquired as time-based usage shares rather than square footage. Ownership remains real, but is relieved of its operational burden: maintenance, bureaucracy, cleaning, and security are centralized and become almost invisible to the owner. The app functions as the true operational center of the system. Through it, periods of use are organized, homes are exchanged with other owners, and personalized services are activated. It is here that the distance from the traditional timeshare model becomes clear: no fixed weeks, no standardized spaces, no generic language of hospitality. What is purchased is not a container, but a project—an architectural experience that changes radically from one place to another.

The latest project initiated by the company is Vertex, through which NOT A HOTEL raises the stakes by introducing a second design line. The goal is no longer simply to build exceptional houses in exceptional places, but to define a replicable method—a scalable system, a housing platform conceived to operate beyond Japan. This marks a shift from more strictly site-specific residences toward a logic that requires a stable and transferable design structure.

The inaugural project, launched in 2025—once again in Okinawa and designed by Zaha Hadid Architects—makes this ambition explicit by shifting the focus from form to process. Year-long climate analyses, prefabricated systems, targeted strategies to reduce environmental impact, and a reading of topography as a design matrix outline an approach aimed not at singularity, but at an operational model.

More than an isolated episode, Vertex is conceived as a foundation meant to be exportable. The real test will be to see how a model born within such a specific cultural ecosystem can respond, adapt, and function in other contexts.

Opening image: NOT A HOTEL RUSUTSU, Hokkaidō, Japan. Project: Snøhetta. Courtesy NOT A HOTEL and Snøhetta