The Walled, Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu
08/03/2018.
[Yangzhou] China
metalocus, INÉS OÑATE
metalocus, INÉS OÑATE
Faced with the horizontality of lakes and sheets of water, a brick wall rises that hides in its interior a spatial complexity based on the vernacular architecture of the region.
Aerial view. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Aerial view, roofs. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Fotografía © Pedro Pegenaute
Exterior view. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Facade. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Courtyard. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Roofs and courtyards. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Roofs and courtyards. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Courtyard. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Facade. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Facade. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Stairs to the lake. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Courtyard. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Courtyard. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Roofs. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Interior view. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Interior view. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Corridors. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Corridors. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Corridors. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Corridors. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute
Bathroom. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Photograph© Pedro Pegenaute
Site plan. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.
Courtyard guestroom plan. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.
Courtyard guestroom section. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.
East elevation. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.
Lakeview guestroom elevation. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.
Lakeview guestroom floor plan. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.
Lakeview guestroom sections. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu.
Library guestroom floor plan. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.
Library guestroomsections. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.
Reception elevation and section. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.
Reception floor plan. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.
Diagram. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Courtesy of Neri&Hu.
Roofs. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Sketch by Lyndon Neri
Corridors. The Walled,Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat by Neri & Hu. Sketch by Lyndon Neri
Neri & Hu presents this new luxury hotel near the east coast of China. The project unifies the space through a grid of courtyards bordered by recycled brick walls. Inside these courtyards, without touching the walls, the program is distributed, loading the corridors with a certain spatial tension. The architects play with this tension generating long perspectives between the rooms, and directing the light thanks to the brick patterns of the walls.
Description of project by Neri & Hu
Situated in close proximity to Yangzhou’s scenic Slender West Lake, the site given to Neri&Hu to design a 20-room boutique hotel was a challenging one, dotted with small lakes and a handful of existing structures. The design brief called for the adaptive reuse of several of the old buildings by giving them new functions, while adding new buildings to accommodate the hotel’s capacity needs. Neri&Hu’s strategy to unify these scattered elements was to overlay a grid of walls and paths onto the site to tie the entire project together, resulting in multiple courtyard enclosures. The inspiration for the design actually originates with the courtyard house typology of vernacular Chinese architecture. As with the traditional courtyard, the courtyard here gives hierarchy to the spaces, frames views of the sky and earth, encapsulates landscape into architecture, and creates an overlap between interior and exterior.
Constructed entirely from reclaimed grey brick, the gridded walls’ narrow interior passageway forces a long perspective, while light plays off the various brick patterns, enticing guests to venture ever deeper into the project. Within the walls, several of the courtyards are occupied by guest rooms and other shared amenities such as the reception, library, and restaurant. Many of the building roof lines are confined within the height of the walls surrounding them, so that they are not visible from afar. Hotel guests traverse the site using the walled pathways to discover their rooms. Once within, there is a clear separation between the building and the walls, a layering of privacy and a sliver of landscape for guests to enjoy. Other courtyards are unoccupied, pockets of lush garden to offer relief from the sense of enclosure.
Journeying along the walls, guests can also ascend through openings above to gain privileged vantage points that look out across the gridded landscape and beyond to the surrounding lakes. Here three additional buildings take their place in the panorama; the rising second floor of the largest courtyard building, a lakeside pavilion of four guestrooms, and a multifunction building at the furthest reaches of the site. Renovating the existing derelict warehouse building, with a partial new concrete addition, this multifunction building houses a restaurant, a theater and an exhibition space. With this project, Neri&Hu’s ambition lies in utilizing a strong landscape element -the wall and courtyard- to unify a complex site and program, while the rustic materiality and layered spaces seek to redefine tradition with a modern architectural language.
More information
Architect and Interior Designer
Neri&Hu Design and Research Office. Partners-in-charge.- Lyndon Neri, Rossana Hu.
Design Team
Partners, Principal in Charge.- Lyndon Neri & Rossana Hu Founding. Senior Associate.- Federico Saralvo. Associate.- Ziyi Cao. Senior Project Manager.- Fong Huang. Senior Architectural Designer.- Sela Lim, Valentina Brunetti and Zhao Lei. Callum Holgate , Leyue Chen, Sean Shen, Xin Liu and Bin Zhu. Associate, product design.- Nicolas Fardet. Yun Wang and Jin Zhang.
Location
1 Baocheng Road, Hanjiang District, Yangzhou, China.
Dates
November 2015 – October 2017.
Area
Site aera.- 32.000 sqm. Gross area.- 4.200 sqm.
Program
Boutique Hotel and Cultural event space.
Materials
Architectural.- Recycled Gray Brick, Exposed Aggregate Concrete, Recycled Gray Roof Tiles, Bamboo Engineered Wood, Raw Steel, White Plaster. Interiors.- Recycled Gray Brick, Concrete, Terrazzo, White Oak, Walnut, Bronze, Raw Steel. Fixtures & Fittings.- PG, Kohler, Duravit, Zucchetti. Decorative Lighting.- Lighting fixtures by Neri&Hu. Furniture.- Custom furniture by Neri&Hu.
Photography
LYNDON NERI - ROSSANA HU. NERI AND HU
Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, founded in 2004 by partners Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office is an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China. Neri&Hu works internationally providing architecture, interior, master planning, graphic, and product design services. Currently working on projects in many countries, Neri&Hu is composed of multi-cultural staff who speak over 30 different languages. The diversity of the team reinforces a core vision for the practice: to respond to a global worldview incorporating overlapping design disciplines for a new paradigm in architecture.
Lyndon Neri is a Founding Partner of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, an inter-disciplinary international architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China. In 2014, Wallpaper* announced Neri&Hu as 2014 Designer of The Year. In 2013, Mr. Neri was inducted into the U.S. Interior Design Hall of Fame with his partner Ms. Rossana Hu. The practice was the 2011 INSIDE Festival Overall Winner, won AR Awards for Emerging Architecture 2010 by Architectural Review and was selected as one of the Design Vanguards in 2009 by Architectural Record. Mr. Neri received a Master of Architecture at Harvard University and a Bachelor of Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to starting his own practice with partner Rossana Hu, he was the Director for Projects in Asia and an Associate for Michael Graves & Associates in Princeton for over 10 years, and also worked in New York City for various architectural firms.
Rossana Hu is a Founding Partner of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, an inter-disciplinary international architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China. In 2014, Wallpaper* announced Neri&Hu as 2014 Designer of The Year. In 2013, Mr. Neri was inducted into the U.S. Interior Design Hall of Fame with his partner Ms. Rossana Hu. The practice was the 2011 INSIDE Festival Overall Winner, won AR Awards for Emerging Architecture 2010 by Architectural Review and was selected as one of the Design Vanguards in 2009 by Architectural Record. Ms. Hu received a Master of Architecture and Urban Planning from Princeton University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and Music from the University of California at Berkeley. Before establishing Neri&Hu with her partner Lyndon Neri, Ms. Hu worked for Michael Graves & Associates, Ralph Lerner Architect in Princeton, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York City, and The Architects Collaborative (TAC) in San Francisco.
