Xiangzhou, located in the center of Guangxi, is known for the local hot spring which has centuries of history, and is being referred to as “the Best Hot Spring in South Central China”. Silkgarden Resort and Spa, is situated at this pastoral scene, which is described with the verse “Fairy water falls on earth, and beautiful scenery is looming in the mist”. In resort planning and design, garden style architecture is a common construction technique used.
The design looks at how to make up the loss of traditional culture and to redefine the resort. The designer divides the main functions of the hotel into guest room area, dining & meeting center and spa center ultimately, and redefines them with Chinese traditional courtyard relationship. At the guest room area, guests could enter the three courtyards enclosed by ten two-story buildings through the front yard surrounded by the lobby and auxiliary space.
They form the main structure of guestrooms, and the courtyards become the main nodes that connect all the spaces. After fully consideration of guests’ routes of activity and the service process and radius, the three courtyards are distributed in “triangle” shape. In traditional courtyard, all functional spaces are closed to external environment and open to the courtyard itself. However, base on the modern way of life and the management pattern of the hotel, the designer takes a completely different approach: the courtyards are closed to all guest rooms and open to the exterior environment.
This ensures the privacy of the guests while at the same time cre-ates excellent outdoor views. Before entering each building from the courtyards, guests need to get through the small yards of each building and then walk through the bamboo grove in front of each guest room in the corridor. In this way, an imagery where there are courtyards in the courtyard, and there are scenes in front of the house is created.
Different designs of different spaces allow the guests to experience the process of entering into their private space while sensing the changes of spaces, and their mind is thus fully relaxed. The tech-nique of courtyard is also used in dining and meeting center and hot spring bath center. The banquet hall, dining hall and confer-ence room are unfolded naturally around a central courtyard.
The use of courtyard makes the space of the hot spring bath cen-ter open or close to outside different environments properly. The designer avoids complex shapes and facade; white is taken as background, and locally produced cinerous stone is used to form the basic outline of the building, and the timber used in some parts increases the friendly feeling of the space.
Local natural sceneries “cloud”, “amazing trees” and “beautiful wa-ter” are extracted by the designer in an abstract way, and being integrated into interior and exterior spaces of the hotel by using different techniques. This makes the interior space corresponds finely with the exterior space and creates a “Yin Yang” harmony between them. “Cloud”, “tree” and “water” are embodied in the design of every courtyard and become the design theme of the in-terior space of guest room, dining area and spa center.
Based on these elements, the design of standard guest rooms makes changes from consistency through dealing with colors and details, giving the guests different feelings. “Zhuang brocade” pat-tern which derived from local traditional handwoven fabrics are re-flected in every part of the space such as walls, partitions, furni-ture, fabrics etc. in various ways.
Together with the massive application of local materials and con-struction methods, it shows the designer’s respect to the local tra-ditional culture in a moderate and exquisite way; and meanwhile it offers the guests a native, comfortable and natural leisure experi-ence and natural taste.
Chinese traditional culture becomes weaker and weaker with the impact of modern civilization, so what could be done to keep it from becoming “Moon in the water” and “flower in the mirror”? The designer hopes to find a new way through using modern tech-niques while keeping the traditional essence such as quiet, delicate, profound and Zen sense. By doing this, a new inheritance way may then be found. Source by Shenzhen Rongor Design & Consultant.
- Location: Xiangzhou, Guangxi, China
- Architect: Shenzhen Rongor Design & Consultant Co., Ltd
- Designer: QIN Yue-Ming
- Cooperative Company: Shenzhen Urbanspace Architecture & Land-scape Designing Consultants Co., Ltd, Newspace Design, D+D Asso-ciates
- Developer: Guangxi Silkgarden Resort and Spa Development Co., Ltd
- Area: 2500 m2
- Year: 2014
- Photographs: Jing Xu-Feng, Courtesy of Shenzhen Rongor Design & Consultant
