Another masterpiece has been added to the collection of prestigious properties owned by NOT A HOTEL Co. Ltd., a Japanese luxury hospitality brand whose portfolio includes works by award-winning international starchitects (from Bjarke Ingels, to Snøhetta, to Sou Fujimoto). This time, the group's new project is signed by Pritzker Prize winner Jean Nouvel who, on the island of Yakushima (a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its ancient landscape of thousand-year-old cedars) in southern Japan, has created a piece of architecture that embodies some of the themes most cherished in his expressive poetics: from the blurring of boundaries (between architecture and nature, between the physical and the spiritual, between reality and dreams) to the imaginative experience of the place.

Experimenting once again with glass, and aligning himself with the path of architecture exploring forms of radical immersion in natural topography, Nouvel once again seems to draw inspiration from the context for a poetic gesture: more than a house, Yakushima NOT A HOTEL is a “gateway” leading to sensory experiences, previously dormant and magically awakened here by the sound of rain and wind, by the mist that blurs the contours of forms and by the sky reflected on the translucent surfaces. 

Sales of the holiday home, according to the fractional ownership model adopted by the company, are scheduled to begin in the summer of 2026.

The building is immersed in the forest like an anthropic element that has sprung surprisingly from the earth: clear, essential glass volumes play with the materiality of the rock from which they emerge like crystals, introjecting nature into the domestic space and expanding the view beyond the tectonic boundary of the dwelling, towards the infinity pool and the landscape behind.

Opening image: Jean Nouvel, Not a hotel Yakushima, Japan, 2025. Courtesy Not a hotel