The brief for Urban Post Hotel, in Foshan, China, was a result of the client’s – director of A.J. Mason Group, Mr. Jazon Sze – wish for a hotel that “brought together many of the things he personally wished to find in the various cities he travelled to.” He wanted to combine historical locations, a feeling of a designer home, but also include full amenities and services for a business traveller.

Jason was very much interested in story telling, and wanted the space to have strong links to the local context by choosing locations that are embedded into the local history, but within the hotel, to combine a modern aesthetic with distinct traces of a vintage story line, reminiscent of early 20th century exploration and innovation.

Originally conceived as something for an ‘Urban Cowboy’, the concept settled into Urban Post, where ‘Post’ plays on both a place to station yourself and get rest, as well as
the idea of postage/postal service and the whole concept of travelling that was associated with post and mail.

Since this was to be the first of future Urban Post Hotels, the designers were able “to play a bit with each room, looking to create something very particular and unique to each of them. This
makes staying here a new experience each time, rather than having 4 identical styles. The whole project was really a designers dream since part of our brief was to ‘explore’ what the concept could become, and we went with that!”

Exploring the hotel, you first see a home. “It is a place that invites you to come again, invite a friend, relax,” say the designers. “The central stair is definitely a main element in the space that unites the 4 floors and is full of light, purposefully muted and more rough in look.

It contrasts with the general warmth that pervades most of the hotel where we went with mostly oak. We knew we wanted a less refined look, and this comes through with the rougher finishes: the rough-cut stonework, reclaimed woods which we left as natural as possible, raw concrete walls, but still luxurious in the details and amenities.”

Project Name: Urban Post Hotel
Location: Foshan, China
Address:37 Donghua Villa, Lingnan Tiandi, Foshan, Guangdong Province, China.
Scale: 440m2
Rooms: 4 rooms
Project Completion: 2014 July
Designer: A00 Architecture, Sacha Silva (www.azerozero.com)
Client: A.J. Mason Group (www.ajmason.com)

A00 Architecture
azerozero.com

A00 Architecture is a Shanghai based practice led by Montreal born architects, SachaSilva and Raefer Wallis.