Luminous spherical auditorium and terraced central atrium of Tianjin Binhai Library

Signature Series · Residence

The Great Asian Room

One exceptional interior at a time: how architecture, objects, service, and ritual manufacture cultural authority across Asia and the diaspora.

Hotels, libraries, tea rooms, museum salons, and dining rooms teach culture through space long before anyone explains a collection or a menu. The Great Asian Room studies one interior at a time: the designers and stewards who shaped it, the rituals it hosts, and the practical terms of visiting it.

Each chapter needs a real argument, named authorship, public access where possible, and photography that shows the place under discussion.

The series opens in Tianjin, where MVRDV's library atrium turns shelving into civic theatre; continues in Ginza, where Kengo Kuma's bamboo tea café softens the line between Kabukiza and its rooftop garden; and reaches Kanazawa, where Yoshio Taniguchi's Contemplative Space floats in a water mirror.

Published Rooms

Interiors that hold cultural authority

Each chapter is a room study: named designers, visitor logistics, and a precise argument about how the space works.

01 · TianjinTianjin Binhai Library
A luminous atrium functions as an urban living room whose civic authority depends on spatial continuity and printed aluminium bookshelves.
02 · TokyoJugetsudo Ginza Kabukiza
Three thousand bamboo stalks and a folded ceiling turn a public tea café into a grove that softly joins Kabukiza to its rooftop garden.
03 · KanazawaD.T. Suzuki Museum Contemplative Space
A floating pavilion over the Water Mirror Garden manufactures cultural authority through silence, shallow water, and the design of nothingness.

Forthcoming

Rooms still under study

Further chapters in the series, each built around one interior and a precise argument about how it works.

Toronto
Aga Khan Museum Bellerive Room

Open the Series

Current chapter

Residence

The Great Asian Room

Interiors that hold cultural authority

Rooms still under study

Current chapter

The Eye and the Books That Aren’t There

Bamboo Grove Above the Kabukiza

Water Mirror and the Contemplative Space