Raised walkway ties together 360-metre-long hotel in China

A 360-metre-long raised walkway ties together the buildings of Dayun Landison Manor, a hotel in Jiashan, China, completed by Chinese studios HB Architects and Nature Times Art.

The hotel occupies the elongated site of a demolished village. It stretches 360 metres from east to west, reaching a maximum width of 54 metres in the middle and narrowing to 21 metres at its ends.

The project consists of numerous buildings connected by a walkway raised 4.9 metres above the ground. According to the studios, this horizontal layout is a nod to the history of the site and an attempt to recreate a village-like neighbourhood.

"We fictionalised a village to continue the functional essence of 'dwelling'," HB Architects and Nature Times Art told Dezeen.

The raised guest rooms also reference local housing, which is often supported on pilotis. However, the studios deliberately hid the supporting columns to emphasise the visual dominance of the horizontal slab that runs through the site. The slab is 1.1 metres thick.

The hotel's entrance opens into a courtyard with a lake at its centre and a "water curtain" that falls from the surrounding walkway. Guests climb stairs to the raised walkway, which passes around courtyards and gardens on its way to the rooms. A large pool occupies the tip of the raised platform at one end.

"The building offers more than just one kind of experience," said the studios. "You have to walk through it yourself to really get it."

The guest rooms sit in blocks arranged around the raised walkway, while more functional spaces were placed below the slab. The upper blocks were painted earthy yellow, and the lower floor and walkways were painted terracotta red as a reference to the surrounding landscape.

"We deliberately chose to avoid white buildings," said HB Architects and Nature Times Art. "The colours we use in this building show how we think about nature."

"The main colours relate to our design keywords—'earth' or 'nature'," they continued.

Courtyards allow nature to permeate throughout the building.

HB Architects and Nature Times Art are architecture and interior practices based in Shenzhen. The client is Jiashan Dayun Cultural Tourism Development Co. Principal architects are He Bin and Lai Erxun of HB Architects and Wei Jinjing of Nature Times Art. The design team comprises Zhou Yuxin, Li Wenjing, Liu Ming, Shi Lingli and Fang Xuecen. Photography is by Guowei Liu.

The project joins a cluster of recent Chinese hotel conversions and additions: WATG and Wimberly Interiors completed a boutique hotel in Wuxi's Dangkou Ancient Town, and BLUE Architecture Studio turned a cluster of new and old buildings in Yangzhou into a hotel complex. Dayun Landison Manor points to a broader move among Chinese practices toward rebuilding demolished village fabric as landscape-driven hospitality.