Geoffrey P. Moussas

Geoffrey P. Moussas is a New York-born architect who has lived in Japan since 1994. Trained at MIT, where he took his Master of Architecture in 1993, he worked with Fumihiko Maki in Tokyo and with Yoshio Taniguchi before establishing his own practice, Design 1st, in Kyoto in 2001.

His work is rooted in the Japanese house: he has restored and redesigned around forty traditional structures — machiya townhouses, restaurants, tearooms and kura storehouses — and two temples, including a 400-year-old Buddhist temple in Aichi. Genji Kyoto, the 19-room boutique hotel where he was chief designer and architect, opened in 2022 as a Design Hotels member, reading Heian-era domestic space through concrete, cedar imprints and washi. He teaches architectural design at Kyoto University and Waseda.