‘The Koto Lookbook 2026’

Nine years in. The work is only getting bigger.

We started Koto in 2017 with a single idea: that a small building, built in the right place, could change the way someone experiences the world.

What began with two coastlines still shapes the practice today. Theo, drawn along the Irish coast, where long horizons and restless weather carved his eye for landscape. Johnathon and Zoë, who lived on the shores of the Norwegian fjords, where simplicity, warmth and time spent outdoors became a way of seeing. Soon after, Kirstie joined to lead Koto Living, bringing interiors into the same language and completing the studio as it stands today.

"The landscape is the brief. It always has been." - Zoe Little, Koto Founder.

Koto today.

Nine years on, those ideas have grown into something larger: destination hotels, extraordinary homes, and interiors shaped entirely by place, material and atmosphere. The 2026 Lookbook is the clearest picture yet of what Koto has become.

Inside are Koto projects spread across coastlines, forests and rewilded landscapes. Seventeen cabins across a Cornish headland. Lakeside retreats within 1,000 acres of Norfolk rewilding. Botanical hotel suites hidden among the trees of a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Lancashire.

Alongside the projects is the story of the studio itself.

Download lookbook →

One studio, four disciplines.

We are a multidisciplinary team of architects, designers, interior specialists and makers, united by a shared approach to calm minimalism, craftsmanship and spaces shaped by their surroundings. Architecture, interiors, wellness and modular delivery as a single cohesive practice.

The lookbook also sets out, in full, how Koto works with hospitality operators and estate owners at scale. Multi-unit programmes are where our architecture-first approach becomes most powerful. A design language created specifically for your destination, repeated with factory precision, delivered through one studio from first sketch to turnkey handover.

A site. A question. A feeling.

Every project still begins the same way. A feeling about how people might reside somewhere. A view to hold, a light to follow, a place to listen to.

The landscape remains the brief.

Contact.

If a Koto project is on your horizon, we would be pleased to talk.

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Credits.

Architecture - Koto
Interior Design - Koto Living
Photography - Laura Buffery + Justyna Kulam

About Koto.

Modular Architecture - Driven by Nature.

Koto is an architecture and design studio. Founded in 2017 and RIBA-Chartered, we design cabins, wellness spaces, hospitality destinations and private homes — each one shaped by the landscape it stands in, the brand it belongs to, and the people who will stay there. Our work spans bespoke commissions, including the three Michelin-starred Moor Hall Hotel in Lancashire, through to ready-to-order homes and mobile hospitality suites.

“The future of Grand Designs... It’s the future of self-build.”

— Kevin McCloud