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MUJI converts 100-year-old Japanese house into tranquil Airbnb stay

2023-07-27T12:56:00-04:00

Iconic Japanese design retailer MUJI is back on the residential market with details of its new MUJI Base Kamogawa home renovation project for Airbnb.

Located an hour and thirty minutes outside Tokyo in Chiba Prefecture, the new temporary stay inside the 100-year-old former Noda Printmaking Workshop offers amenities for up to five guests aligned with a naturalistic Satoyama lifestyle concept.

Image courtesy MUJI/Airbnb

Of course, the whole scheme comes decked out entirely in MUJI products. The brand synergy extends all the way down to toothbrushes, cookware, and other home goods curated from the MUJI product line. For $152 a night, guests also have the choice between pre-packaged MUJI meals and the reasonably-priced home delivery of produce from local farmers. Seasonal tours of the nearby Takahashi Melon Farm are available as well.

Image courtesy MUJI/Airbnb

The brand says it will soon expand the BASE concept to other cities in Japan...

Airbnb reveals $10 million OMG! Fund design contest winners

2022-10-17T15:29:00-04:00

Airbnb has named the 100 winners of its recently-launched OMG! Fund design contest celebrating the “craziest and most unique” buildings submitted to the short-term rental giant from more than 20 countries across the world.

The contest awards $100,000 to each design as judged by a four-person panel that included design tastemaker Iris Apfel, Airbnb Superhost Kristie Wolfe, architect Koichi Takada, and the company’s VP of Experiential Bruce Vaughn.

"Giant Flower Pot on a Farm in Small Town Idaho" by Whitney H., United States

"Giant Pig in Meadow at Pig Sanctuary" by Tracey S., United States

“What an incredible journey it has been to be a part of the OMG! Fund judging process. There were so many inspiring stories and destinations that I had never heard of before that I’m now eager to visit,” Wolfe said at the announcement. “As a builder myself, I can’t wait to watch these ideas come to life. These are more than just places to spend the night — each one offers an entire experience!”

"Mod...

Kisho Kurokawa-designed Capsule House K is now one of Japan's most coveted short-term rentals

2022-08-31T18:57:00-04:00

As private lodging, a maximum of seven individuals can stay per night, and they can use the kitchen to cook. [...] Kurokawa used the building, called Capsule House K, as a villa residence. His son, Mikio, started offering it for private lodging in May. “I hope visitors will spend a leisurely time here and enjoy being in one of the few existing Metabolism buildings,” said Mikio.

The "sister" of Tokyo's recently-demolished Nakagin Capsule Tower was finished the year after the erstwhile apartment building and is now maintained by architect Kisho Kurokawa's son Mikio and an outside company which manages the bookings. Pets are not allowed, but interested parties can reserve a stay starting at the (fairly reasonable) price of ¥14,300 (or $103 USD) a night for one person.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by 牧野友衛 Tomoe Makino (@tomoemakino)

An NFT version of the more famous Tokyo capsule tower is also up for sale until October 20th. Otherwise, fans of Metabolism might have to cough up some heftier change for one of the structure's original capsules, which some speculate could be about to hit the auction block soon.

Airbnb launches $10 million OMG! Fund design contest to 'build the craziest places on earth'

2022-06-23T12:21:00-04:00

Airbnb is making a new $10 million investment in design with a new project called the OMG! Fund that will commission “100 of the craziest and most unique property ideas” in a design contest open to architects, designers, and the public across the globe.

The contest’s brief’s sole stipulation is that the final product be listed exclusively on Airbnb for at least a year. This is an expansion of the short-term rental company’s $1 million Unique Airbnb Fund, which was slated to award the same $100,000 grant to a group of 10 projects before Covid-19 brought an end to the endeavor. In a press release, the company said its new initiative is “shaped in part by the growing trend of flexible living that has emerged in the past two years.”

Architect Koichi Takada is one of the contest’s judges, joined by superhost Kirstie Wolfe, the designer of Boise's famed Potato Hotel, fashion and interio...

Short-term rentals are putting a record squeeze on renters in the Big Apple

2022-05-20T12:14:00-04:00

The total number of short-term rentals of entire homes in the city’s five boroughs -- those listed on Airbnb Inc. and Expedia Group Inc.’s Vrbo -- is more than 13,000, according to third-party data tracker AirDNA. Meanwhile, rental inventory in Manhattan, Brooklyn and a portion of Queens hovers just over 7,500. The vacancy rate in Manhattan sat at just over 1.5% last month, the second-lowest level on record, according to appraiser Miller Samuel Inc.

Adding to the all-too-familiar notion that short-term rentals have the ability to destroy the livability of a place in its entirety, new data from Douglas Elliman and AirDNA making the rounds today indicate a record-setting shift in the dynamics of urban life as the number of hosted retreats in New York City has surpassed traditional apartment rentals for the first time.

New York’s rental market is in the midst of coming out of the pandemic strong as ever with prices skyrocketing 23 percent to early 2020 levels, fueled in part by an 83.3 percent drop in the total number of rental listings in Manhattan year-over-year. Airbnb responded by saying the findings offer merely “an unfairly narrow look at rental unit availability in a portion of the city,” but the numbers tell a different story. In the last year alone, the stock of available units in the city dwindled by a staggering 16,000 from its 20,743 peak to a new record-low of 4,709.

The end result for renters is sadly predictable as...

Are Airbnbs and ultramodern architecture killing the vibe in Joshua Tree, California?

2022-04-14T13:13:00-04:00

Tensions over visitors, some of whom will, inevitably, want to claim a piece of the desert themselves, has been a part of the area’s story for years. But as the pandemic has boosted Joshua Tree’s allure for travelers, transplants and investors, it has magnified old conflicts and created new conundrums.

Numbers of short-term rentals have doubled in Joshua Tree and the neighboring community of Yucca Valley, presenting an existential crisis to some of its inhabitants dismayed at the new boom in development to meet the demands of the market. Even the tree species that the town is named for is under threat by overdevelopment (or so says the Center for Biological Diversity, whose petition is currently under review by the California Fish and Game Commission.)

Part of the draw is the growing number of Instagram-friendly architectural showpieces that have been spun off into midcentury-inspired camp compounds and Disneyfied planned communities. A rental typology may be developing around the trend entirely, characterized by maximized space for lodgings, matte finishes, and materials like mirrored glass and corrugated steel. Their appeal is nevertheless lost on some local desert dwellers, ...

Airbnb and short-term rentals in the age of COVID-19

2020-04-06T14:59:00-04:00

What will happen to home-sharing in the wake of coronavirus? It’s one of many questions about the fate of pre-pandemic sharing-economy juggernauts like Airbnb. [...] with tourism on hold, national economies staggered, and public attitudes about shared space very much in question, the prospects for that industry are now murky.

Feargus O'Sullivan on the consequences of the short-term rental market's collapse, with particular focus on the industry's dominating player, Airbnb. In the aftermath of a worldwide wave of coronavirus-related booking cancellations, some apartments are reportedly returning to the local long-term rental market.

"Many might welcome the disappearance of at least a proportion of home-shares as a long overdue correction," O'Sullivan writes on CityLab. "It’s certainly possible that quality of life for residents might improve in some heavily touristed areas — such as Barcelona’s Old City — if more apartments had full-time tenants, thus reducing noise nuisance and supporting a broader ecosystem of locally focused stores and amenities."

Airbnb helps the homeless while getting involved with L.A.'s City Council

2016-10-25T13:27:00-04:00

After being criticized for helping to displace renters by inadvertently motivating landlords to turn long-term rentals into short-term hotel-like quarters, Airbnb is getting political and donating $100,000 to Los Angeles' Proposition HHH, which would require city officials to raise tax dollars to build 10,000 units of homeless housing. According to an article in the L.A. Times:

"The contribution comes as a proposed ordinance to regulate short-term rentals is working its way to the City Council. The measure, approved in June by the Los Angeles Planning Commission, would limit short-term rentals to 180 days per year, exclude rent-controlled units and impose a tax on rentals.

Airbnb welcomes being regulated but is not endorsing all the terms of the proposal as is, said spokesman Christopher Nully."

Airbnb in the news:

Airbnb adds a Frank Lloyd Wright home, the Cooke House

2016-10-13T20:54:00-04:00

There are dozens of Frank Lloyd Wright houses across the country that fans of the architect can visit. There are a handful that can be rented. There is only one where you can sleep overnight for $148, which includes a personal guided tour by the 90-year-old owner and breakfast in a Wright-designed “great room.” The Cooke House in Virginia Beach, Va., built in 1959, is one of Wright’s last commissioned works.

For more on Frank Lloyd Wright:

WeWork + Airbnb = PodShare? New live-work space emerges in Los Angeles

2016-03-29T13:06:00-04:00

PodShare's site is laden with millennial-friendly tech buzzwords, like the sharing economy, pod culture, nomadic freelancers, access not ownership, and even “Podestrians,” the company's name for guests, each of whom get profiles on its website. “We’re creating a social network with a physical address,” said Beck. “Our open-floor model offers the highest rate of collisions for social travelers. We do not identify with hostels—we are a co-living space or a live-work community.”

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