°C (Do-C) Ebisu

This was the first hotel of a new brand launched by a company known for its capsule hotels. Where the company’s main chain reinvents the capsule from scratch, here it took the opposite route and asked for an existing capsule hotel to be renovated with the old capsules left in place.

The aim was to erase the old image by changing everything around the capsules. Their dated beige, the colour of an earlier era, was hard to work with, so the design team made it the base colour of the whole interior. Once it was everywhere, the capsules stopped standing out.

Capsule hotels have long been linked with saunas, a habit inherited from older establishments. This building had none, so saunas were added on purpose, taking up the cliché while shedding its dated feel. Capsules and saunas together became the identity of the brand.

The saunas follow Nordic practice, with water poured over hot stones to raise steam. Cooling down matters as much as the heat, and temperature-controlled shower pillars handle that step. The passage between the showers and the sauna is lined floor, walls and ceiling in clear fibre-reinforced plastic for waterproofing, which lets the light glow through.

Outside, the old finishes on the front stairs were stripped to expose the structure, which was then coated in anti-corrosion paint. The whole building was painted in that same red, and the colour became the brand’s signature.