keeping a low profile
just the beginning
The hotel is situated within a disused quarry in the tree lined hills within Suzhou New District (SND). Stage one is a business hotel complex owned and patronised by the local government and run by JAL Hotel Group (see BAU424). It provides the complex with 150 rooms and suites, two restaurants, a fitness centre, a spa, and a small confrerence facility.
loosly stacked and wrapping the pond
The architecture follows the geometry of the quarry walls. Four single storey bent beams, are loosly stacked on top of one another and wrap around a small lake on the site. This four storey stack contains the hotel’s public programs. Guest drop-off is on the top floor and visitor drop-off is on the lowest floor. Offsetting each floor creates continuous terraces along their length and connects with generous green terraces at either end.
eventful journey
The hotel’s private program, the guests’ rooms, are housed in five wings radiating from the publc stack. Each wing consists of a stack of two beams, shifted to create terraces and to follow the topography in large steps. These meandering plans create eventful journeys along single loaded corridors with windows overlooking the landscape. The roughly bent geometry reflects the rugged quality of the quarry and produces a fragmented humane scale that downplays the scale of what is infact a large architectural intervention.