At the Northern end of Kyoto, Japan’s cultural capital, a 100-year-old elementary school sat vacant for years at one of the city’s three Edo-era entrances—in feudal times, a rest stop for weary travelers. Vacant for years, the school was transformed into a dual-purpose property, its central building functioning as a boutique hotel with sweeping views of the Higashiyama Mountains and an adjacent wing preserved as a community-oriented space with a soccer field and public courtyard hosting seasonal activites for events like the Aoi (spring), Gion (summer), and Jidai (fall) Matsuri festivals.

Nestled within the heart of Higashiyama District just minutes away from the National Museum of Modern Art and dozens of UNESCO World Heritage sites like Kiyomizu-dera Temple, the hotel features a fusion restaurant, onsen-style spa, and traditional craft shop. Drawing inspiration from the area’s layered cultural history, stone roads, and ita-kura wood-frame architecture, the courtyard radiates out from a perfectly round pond. Underlaid with black stone, the pond is designed as a “moon mirror” referencing lunar cycles and eclipses, emphasized by an offset crescent of nested lighting in the evening. Visitors can bathe their feet in a sunken pool within the crescent, its clean lines contrasting with rough-hewn boulders placed carefully throughout the yard. An adjacent reflecting pond conceals a traditional Japanese tea house operated by Gion Tsujiri, a local establishment founded in 1860.