Not a Hotel Operator Nota to Open Not a Museum in Tokyo

Nota, the company behind hotelier Not a Hotel, will open its first cultural space, Not a Museum, at the Imperial Hotel Plaza Tokyo in summer 2027 — in a building scheduled for demolition in 2031.

The mixed-use space will occupy floors one through four of the 2,000-square-metre commercial centre, which faces teardown as part of the reconstruction of the Imperial Hotel Tokyo tower. That demolition has been delayed due to an increase in construction costs, opening a four-year window from summer 2027 to 2031.

Nota's subsidiary Not a City will design the space together with SKWAT, a Tokyo cultural collective that runs the SKWAT Kameari Art Centre and is led by founder Keisuke Nakamura of design firm Daikei Mills. The two partners will handle everything from planning to management across the four years the space operates.

What will Not a Museum actually do?

The organisers position it as a testbed rather than a conventional institution.

• It will function as a live experiment in programming across disciplines.
• Art, music, books, cinema and fashion will share one platform.
• Not a City and SKWAT will run operations for the full four-year lifespan.

"It will serve as an experimental platform for the future, where cutting-edge culture across art, music, books, cinema, fashion, and more comes together, is tested, and continues to evolve," Not a City and SKWAT said in a statement.

Why a doomed building?

The project reflects Not a City's broader strategy of exploiting unused spaces in Tokyo, where buildings are typically demolished rather than adapted and reused for new developments. The Imperial Hotel Plaza becomes a temporary asset precisely because its demolition date is fixed.

The company is also behind Japa Valley Tokyo, a commercial district set to open in 2027 in the yet-to-be-built Yurakucho Park — an area developed with Mitsubishi Estate on a site cleared after two 1960s buildings were torn down. Producer Pharrell Williams and fashion designer Nigo, who joined Nota as creative advisors last year, are designing that district.

SKWAT brings curatorial credentials to the partnership. The collective has previously hosted exhibitions by designer Kwangho Lee and by architects Herzog & de Meuron.

If Not a Museum succeeds, it could offer Tokyo a working model for interim cultural use of buildings awaiting the wrecking ball — a category the city is not short of.