The Rihga Royal Gran Okinawa was launched as a luxury hotel in Okinawa. We were tasked with designing the dining and bar space on the top floor of the hotel.

Preserving the hotel’s concept of “Okinawan nature,” the bar lounge is designed in a forest theme, while the dining space is designed with the theme of the sun. The bar lounge design gets inspiration from Gajumaru, a type of banyan tree native to Okinawa. Metal material is used to express the organic and natural, such as roots hanging down from branches and sunlight filtering through leaves, and to express the beauty of the shadows in a forest of Gajumaru. The ceiling’s motif of Gajumaru leaves is also designed to be visible from the road that runs outside the hotel. To achieve this, the lounge design is given an unrealistic scale that creates the feeling of stepping into another world. The Ryukyu glass objéts made together with an Okinawan craftsman and placed throughout the space incorporate Okinawan culture with the aim of uniting new worlds. The dining area is designed in the image of the piercing rays of the Okinawan sun, expressed in a gorgeous metal mesh cut-out created with a laser. An Okinawan artist painted a wall to portray the sun, infusing the mural with the spirit of the Ryukyu Islands.

Using an entirely new representation in this spatial construction while incorporating elements of the Okinawan genome, a new style of Okinawan dining was created.