Inside a Kyoto Guesthouse: Designing for Quiet

The brief for The Alder Rooms asked for an 18-key guesthouse that felt considered rather than hotel-like. It didn’t specify materials, acoustics, or how the lobby should sound — but sound turned out to be one of the most important decisions on the project.

The Problem With Double-Height Spaces

The lounge sits under a double-height ceiling salvaged from the original machiya’s roof structure, which is beautiful and also acoustically brutal — hard surfaces everywhere, and every conversation carrying across the room. Rather than add acoustic panelling that would have fought the architecture, we turned to vertical timber battening, sourced from a family-run mill outside the city, which does the acoustic work while reading as a deliberate material choice rather than a fix.

Letting the Guest Rooms Go Quiet

Once the lounge was resolved, the guest rooms could afford to be simpler: plaster walls, low platform beds, and a single piece of art per room. Guests spend the loud parts of their stay in the lounge and the quiet parts in the room — the material palette just makes that split explicit.