Capsule Hotels · 4

Tatami is laid on the floor of the capsule. The mat, the futon bedding and the low horizon of a traditional room are kept, and everything else is taken out. What remains is a ryokan room compressed to the size of a berth, entered from the side rather than through a door.

The hotel is a small property in central Kyoto, on a narrow street of ordinary low buildings rather than in a tourist quarter. It works as a hostel, with the capsules on one floor and shared washing rooms elsewhere in the building. From outside it looks like the neighbouring blocks, which is usual for accommodation of this kind in the city.

The tatami capsules are in the shared sleeping rooms of the building, arranged in a row along the wall. They are reached from the corridor of that floor, and each one opens on its long side.

Rather than filling a room, the capsules are ranged along a single long passage. You walk the length of it and the openings appear one after another on either hand. The arrangement is closer to a ship than to a dormitory, and the passage itself is the only circulation there is.

The hotel occupies floors of a plain commercial building in Tokyo, of the kind that carries offices above and shops at street level. There is no separate hotel front: the entrance is a lift lobby shared with other tenants. Inside, the floors are given over to the passages, the berths and the shared washing rooms.

The passage runs the depth of the floor, from the lift lobby to the far wall, with the washing rooms at one end. The berths are stacked two high along its length, reached by short ladders.

Sleeping modules are stacked on the floors over a cafe, and the cafe is open to the street rather than reserved for the people upstairs. Anyone from the district can sit in it. The building therefore has two publics in it at once, one passing through and one staying the night.

It stands in Shibuya, on a street of small ground floor businesses a short walk from the busiest crossings in Tokyo. The building is narrow and modest, with the cafe taking the whole of the ground level and the accommodation above. Nothing about the front announces a hotel; the cafe sign is what you see first.

The modules are on the upper floors, reached by the stair behind the cafe counter. The cafe is at street level, facing the pavement, and it is the only part of the building a passer by can walk into.

Each unit is a padded chair standing in the terminal. A cover slides out over the seat, turning an open chair into a closed berth with the traveller inside. Flat out, it makes a bed with a screen around it. Nothing is built into the floor or walls.

There is no hotel building here. The units stand inside Helsinki Airport, in the passenger areas of the terminal, among the seating and the walkways rather than behind a door of their own. The room around them is the terminal itself, with its ceilings, signage and constant movement, and the units are furniture set down in it.

They are placed in the terminal, in the passenger zone, near the gates rather than in the public landside hall. Their position depends on the layout of the terminal at the time, which is changed as the airport is rebuilt.