Setouchi Retreat by Onko Chishin (Matsuyama) - Best Rates

Food & Drink

Traditional Japanese cuisine from seasonal local ingredients
Spa & Recreation

2 pools, spa, hot-spring Jacuzzi, sauna, art gallery

Architecture

Tadao Ando
The Originals

Tomoki Matsuyama
Themes

Countryside, Well-being, Offbeat Destinations

Location

Matsuyama, Japan (8), Asia (32)
Rooms

7

Food & Drink

Traditional Japanese cuisine from seasonal local ingredients
Spa & Recreation

2 pools, spa, hot-spring Jacuzzi, sauna, art gallery

Themes

Countryside, Well-being, Offbeat Destinations
Location

Matsuyama, Japan (8), Asia (32)
Rooms

7

This masterwork by a legendary minimalist architect Tadao Ando draws light and air into vast spaces, evoking the infinity of traditional Zen poetics.

Rooms & Suites

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Architecture Tadao Ando

Architecture Tadao Ando

Tadao Ando’s walls are renowned for their smoothness, which he achieves by pouring concrete into airtight wooden forms.

Situated in the verdant Matsuyama area of Japan, overlooking the Seto Inland Sea, the structure was initially built 20 years ago as a private guesthouse. The residence was then converted into a small modern art museum before reopening as Setouchi Retreat by Onko Chishin—all under Tadao Ando’s supervision.

Interior design Majestic minimalism

This is a place of sublime minimalist luxury, where the unnecessary is stripped away.

Perfectly complementing Ando’s “smooth-as-silk” concrete walls, museum-quality artwork abounds at the hotel. Here, a painting by Frank Stella—one of the leading figures of the postwar minimalist and abstract movements—crowns the hotel’s dining room. Guests also discover a large-scale work by calligrapher/visual artist Rieko Kawabe, whose practice is rooted in Japanese aesthetic traditions.

Setouchi Retreat Aonagi Design in Matsuyama

The Originals Tomoki Matsuyama

“From architects, designers, and chefs to sommeliers, farmers, artisans, therapists, athletes, and storytellers—they are all heroes to me.”

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210225 Store Product Images Art Prints 30X45 1800X1200px Setouchi

With the first edition of our Design Hotels Art Print Series we are sharing some of our most treasured travel photography. This still by German photographic duo Claus Brechenmacher & Reiner Baumann dramatically frames the architecturally bound pool and the free-flowing Seto Inland Sea.

Buy it here

This hotel is featured in Taste and Place: The Design Hotels Book.

Destinations

Wabi-Sabi: An Imperfect Guide to Japan

As we assess all that we’ve taken for granted this year, we found that travel is high on that list. We are dreaming about traveling through Japan but find that it’s also become important to ask how and why. Inspired by the unique Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, we decided to peer into this captivating land through this special lens.

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