In early 2011, Shanghai-based architects Team BLDG arrived at the site of Hotel Wind, and as soon as they climbed to the top of Yunding Mountain behind the site, a guide who was with them used an idiom to explain the local geological features as “green welled up from a thousand stones”. Because of the unique warm and moist weather in the south of Fujian, it’s quite normal to find green vegetation overgrowth here, even on the surface of stones and in the gaps in between.
This was also where the concept for the hotel came from: the design is based on organic principles of growth and is formed by a series of overlapping boxes, which emerge from the side of the Yunding Mountain and face out towards the ocean.
The second architectural inspiration was informed by the ancestral temples in the area, which are the centre of the residents’ culture and communications. All the houses in the village are built facing them. The same connection between the private and public is reflected in the hotel’s design. Three installations – Well of Rain, Well of Tree and Well of Wind – are inserted into the building from the rooftop, passing through some private suites and meeting at the lobby, thus bringing the outside in and blurring the boundary between the public and private.
Team BLDG
team-bldg.com
