Summary
NOT A CITY is converting the first four floors of the Imperial Hotel Tokyo's Tower building into NOT A MUSEUM, a temporary hub for art, books, music, fashion and cinemaDAIKEI MILLS and NOT A HOTEL ARCHITECTS are handling the spatial design, with SKWAT co-producing and co-operating the projectThe space occupies the former Imperial Hotel Plaza Tokyo and is set to run for roughly four years before the tower is demolished
NOT A CITY, the urban development arm of NOT A HOTEL parent company NOTA, is launching NOT A MUSEUM, a time-limited cultural complex inside the Imperial Hotel Tokyo's Tower building. Set to open in Summer 2027, the project reoccupies the shuttered Imperial Hotel Plaza Tokyo for an operating window of about four years, giving the space one final use before the tower comes down as part of the hotel's redevelopment.
NOT A MUSEUM will spread across roughly 2,000 tsubo, or about 6,600 square meters, covering the building's first through fourth floors. A handful of existing ground-floor shops will stay outside the project's boundaries, but the rest of the former retail plaza is being handed over to the new program.
Two studios are shaping the interiors. Tokyo design office DAIKEI MILLS is partnering with NOT A HOTEL's in-house team, NOT A HOTEL ARCHITECTS, on the spatial plan. DAIKEI MILLS' involvement runs deeper than layout, as SKWAT, the collective that grew out of the studio in 2019 under founder Keisuke Nakamura, is co-leading planning, production and day-to-day operations alongside NOT A CITY. SKWAT's model centers on temporarily taking over idle or overlooked urban spaces and opening them to the public through exhibitions, publishing, retail and talks.
That approach informs how the floors are meant to function. Rather than a gallery with fixed displays, the space is designed as a mixed-discipline venue where art, books, music, fashion and film share the same floors and evolve over time, framed by the tagline "CULTURE, IN THE MAKING." In his comments on the project, Nakamura framed time itself as the site's most valuable resource and described the space as something that will never be finished, built collectively by those who pass through it.
NOT A MUSEUM is scheduled to operate from summer 2027 through March 2031, after which the Tower building will be demolished for reconstruction. Until then, the plaza that opened in 1983 as a cluster of luxury boutiques and closed in March 2024 gets a second act. In its statement, the Imperial Hotel said it hopes the new venue will carry forward the site's history of showcasing fashion and culture while presenting what's current.
NOT A MUSEUM is slated to open in Summer 2027 at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo's Tower building in Uchisaiwaicho, Chiyoda, and will run through March 2031.
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