Hasta La Ideas

This forest-like beauty salon in Osaka has birch trees wedged between the floor and ceiling (+ slideshow).

Named Onico, the hair and nail salon was designed by Japanese architect Ryo Isobe.

The architect imagined the space as a woodland filled with antique objects and other curiosities, including a stuffed owl.

“Our client likes DIY and he makes many objects and furniture by himself,” said Isobe. “So we made the space as if it is a treasure hunt in the woods.”

Birch trees are dotted around the space, amongst a styling area containing assorted chairs and mirrors.

A mixture of lanterns, chandeliers and bare light bulbs are suspended from the ceiling, while fairy lights are strung up beside a cluster of artificial ivy in the room behind.

Other details include a decorative balustrade, empty picture frames and a golden dresser.

We’ve featured a few hair and beauty salons from Japan, including one lined with colourful ceramic tiles and one containing a zigzagging steel screen.

See more salon and spa interiors »

The post Onico Hair and Nail
by Ryo Isobe appeared first on Dezeen.

Architect Hiroyuki Miyake used a traditional English bricklaying pattern for the ceramic tiles on the walls of this beauty salon in Toyokawa, Japan.

“I tried to express alternative nostalgia by using glossy colourful tiles instead bricks,” Miyake told Dezeen.

Displaying a graduated pattern of autumn colours, the tiles line the inside of the shampoo area and also clad the building’s exterior.

A partition that separates the styling and shampoo areas features doorways that copy the rhythm of the windows opposite.

The are no tiles on the walls of the styling area, where free-standing mirrors are arranged in a line and naked light bulbs hang on copper fixings overhead.

This isn’t the first salon we’ve featured by Hiroyuki Miyake, following one with a zigzagging steel screen.

See more stories about salons and spas »

Photographs are by Rikoh Adachi.

Here’s a description from Hiroyuki Miyake:

Beauty salon “Granny.F” designed by Hiroyuki Miyake

This beauty salon is located in Toyokawa , Aichi , Japan. It was renovated from the existing empty building.

Although the outer wall of tiling is carried out based on the British brick pattern, it is expressing coexistence of tradition and novel by the gradation pattern, and rich gloss.

The sun takes for sinking and the tile loses own color gradually. However, instead, it becomes one big background which projects the expression of a town which always changes, such as the sky at sunset and a headlight of the car which goes a passage.

By suppressing the lighting to an outer wall side, the light from the window arranged at equal intervals is emphasized, and a homely atmosphere is expressed by showing an internal situation in fragments.

The tile which is visible to the opening side of an outer wall or a partition wall is settled like “skin”, and the gray space is emphasizing “inner side.”

The pendant light of the naked light bulb hung at random has given shiny and coloring into the space arranged symmetrically.

The pendant lights are covered with copper leaf.

Internal styling area is changed completely with the exterior, and the space of dim mortar gray spreads. This is a place which creates beauty and the leading role is a person to the last. Space is positioning that it is only a background.

A shampoo area is positioning called the exterior, being in an inside by choosing the same tile as an outer wall.

The gradation of a tile and indirect lighting wraps people in a rich feeling of tolerance.

People experience various services and spend a relax time while going those space back and forth.

Plan – click above for larger image 

The post Granny.F by
Hiroyuki Miyake appeared first on Dezeen.

Thousands of bamboo rods hang from the ceiling like stalactites to divide the space inside this Bangkok hair salon by Thai designer Nattapon Klinsuwan of NKDW.

Klinsuwan was inspired by the way natural caves are divided, where he noticed that “often the stalactite and stalagmite will connect and become a column, then a wall, creating rooms.”

In places the poles are long enough to touch the floor, creating permeable walls to screen off the colouring and shampooing areas.

See all our stories about bamboo »

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Above: position of bamboo poles on the ceiling

The post Salon in Bangkok
by NKDW appeared first on Dezeen.

Here’s another project from Japanese designer Reiichi Ikeda, this time a hair salon in Osaka with diagonally striped wood and frosted glass (+ slideshow).

The salon’s sparse interior contains a wooden counter and screen walls which hide the storage and washing areas.

The glass on the shop window is frosted with stripes intended to produce a flickering moiré pattern at viewpoints where they overlap.

The angle of the lines matches the IRO logo, in which the ‘O’ has been rotated to the same degree as the axis of the earth.

Ikeda worked on the concept and the graphic design with Yuma Harada of UMA/design farm.

The bare concrete floor and exposed ceiling make the shop seem unfinished, like the Osaka fashion boutique designed by Ikeda that we featured earlier this week.

Another Ikeda design we featured recently was a clothes shop with a wire-mesh box inside it.

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Photographs are by Yoshiro Masuda.

Here’s more information from the designer:

Design concept:

This is an interior design for a hair salon in Osaka, Japan. The interior design was by Reiichi Ikeda of reiichi ikeda design, and the graphic design including the logo design was by Yuma Harada of UMA/design farm. The two companies shared the concept with each other and comprehensively directed the hair salon together.

Generally, a hair salon has a conventional traffic line of waiting, shampooing, cutting, and so on. To add uniqueness, I dotted some visually standardized box-shaped objects such as furniture and a spot that have roles.

The angle of the diagonal lines which constitute the facade and the interior visual effects follows the concept of the logo “IRO”. The “O” in the logo “IRO” is rotated 23.43 degrees to be parallel to the axis of the earth.

Even though the Japanese word “IRO” means colours in English, we considered it as what gives us the seasonal indications with the Sun, instead of as being colourful. The light streaming through the diagonal lines and its shadows shifts from season to season.

Additionally, the moiré effect caused by the overlapping lines helps to bring out the visual movement in the design.

Project Name: IRO
Use: Hair salon
Location: 2-7-17-105, Minami-Horie, Nishi-ku, Osaka-city, Osaka, Japan 550-0015
Store floor area: 59.4 square metres
Completion of construction: Mar. 30, 2012
Interior Designer: Reiichi Ikeda and Yuma Harada
Photography: Yoshiro Masuda

The post IRO by
Reiichi Ikeda appeared first on Dezeen.

A steel screen zigzags in front of a shampoo area at this dimly lit beauty salon in Gifu, Japan, by architect Hiroyuki Miyake.

Paint applied to the surface of this two-millimetre-thick screen gives it a graduated surface that becomes more and more reflective nearer to the Japanese oak floor.

A missing fold at the centre of the zigzag provides an entrance.

Three chairs are positioned opposite in front of square mirrors, while a square window provides a view into a storage closet at the back.

See more stories about salons and spas in our dedicated category.

Photography is by Rikoh Adachi.

Here’s some more explanation from Hiroyuki Miyake:

Beauty salon TROOVE by Hiroyuki Miyake

This beauty salon is located in Gifu, Japan, and is designed by Japanese designer Hiroyuki Miyake.


This salon is run by the one stylist. In order that the stylist face each client thoroughly and create beauty. A sacred and pure atmosphere was emphasised by concise composition and light and darkness.

Stand lights [AKARI] were designed by ISAMU NOGUCHI in the 80s. They are also manufactured in Gifu, Japan.


The space constituted by concrete and the Japanese oak exists as a background with depth.

The partition divides a shampoo booth is inspired by japanese traditional folding screen. It is made from 2mm thick galvanised iron, and the lower part is reflecting the wooden floor by processed gradation paint. It stands like it floats.

Although the screen seems to be one apparently, in fact, there is a passage in the middle.

All openings of a wall are designed by the board material of 150-mm width a module.


Light and darkness emphasise the meaning of a place without explanation.

The font was designed by inserting the Chinese character means “ONE” in “TIMES font”.

After the Tohoku Earthquake in last year, we the Japanese have been reconsidering strongly about our country and ourselves as japanese. By the accident of nuclear power plants, power saving was obliged and many lighting of the town was turned off. Although we felt negatively about darkness at first, we noticed it was enough to live. Rather, former was too bright. Originally we the Japanese accepted shades, and while they live, they have discovered beauty and art. Because this condition, we gaze at Japanese traditional culture again and evolve it, open up a new era.