平井政俊建築設計事務所 Masatoshi Hirai Architects Atelier

Situated midway up a hill between Shibuya Station and Daikanyama—an area where commercial and residential zones intersect—this guesthouse was conceived as a “reversed blank,” a space where one encounters a new self through the experience of travel.

It is not merely a place to stay. It is a blank of time and space that allows the stimuli gained during travel to quietly circulate within oneself, revealing new ways of seeing the world. This is what “UPSIDE DOWN” represents.

The interior is composed of layered steps in both the floor and ceiling, as if drawing in the undulating topography of Shibuya. Centered around a “Window of Light” that visualizes the 22-meter elevation, the space connects the aboveground, ground surface, and underground in a gentle continuum.

Sitting, lying, leaning, climbing, gazing—through diverse postures, the time spent with family or friends becomes an exchange where bodily senses and thoughts stimulate one another.

By opening a small wooden shutter, one finds windows that frame the city’s hidden nature and everyday life from unexpected angles, reversing one’s point of view as if looking at the everyday from the outside.

Historically, this area once lay along the old Kamakura Road, where thatched huts served as resting places for travelers. These huts were more than simple stops—they were small blanks in which people reflected on their own daily lives while looking out over fellow travelers and the surrounding mountain villages.

UPSIDE DOWN preserves that memory by layering functional elements—regulating heat, light, wind, sound, and humidity—onto a skeleton of concrete and glass, securing privacy within. Using recycled materials such as felt made from discarded clothing and wood fiber insulation, thinned timber, and reed screens gathered from across Japan, the design gently reconnects people with the environment in a cyclical way. These relationships form the interior landscape and simultaneously create a new vantage point from which to look back at the world through travel.

When a photograph of the room is flipped upside down, the stepped floors and ceilings create the illusion of another mirrored reality. This too is one of the experiences of the “reversed blank.” We hope that the experiences here will quietly unsettle one’s existing values, allow these reflections to be shared with family and friends, and offer opportunities to encounter a new self.

UPSIDE DOWN seeks to weave new relationships between people and the environment, and between the extraordinary and the everyday within the modern city, offering journeys that foster self-transformation.