Communing with nature
The Great Wall of China forms the backdrop and inspiration for a Kempinski hotel with a difference. Andy Williamson reports.
IF CLASS is contagious, then the Commune by the Great Wall Kempinski has done the smart thing in setting up shop next to a design classic - the Great Wall of China. This provides both a backdrop and an inspiration for the design of the villas, scattered over 8km2, that make up this unique design project.
The Commune began life in 2002 as a collection of 12 contemporary villas, each designed by a different Asian architect. It was part boutique hotel and part museum that became a showcase of contemporary Chinese and Asian architecture and won a special award at the Venice Biennale. As such it pushed the boundaries of our understanding of the concept of a hotel.
The project was the brainchild of Zhang Xin. A native of Beijing, after studying and working abroad she returned to the Chinese capital in 1995 to set up her own property company, SOHO China - an acronym for ‘small office, home office'. After success providing flexible, multifunctional spaces for young, urban professionals and their companies she came up with the idea for the Commune, giving each architect a budget of US$1 million.
These dozen highly individualistic and idiosyncratic creations form the nucleus of today's hotel. Their names hint at some of the bold ideas that they embody. The focal point for the development is the Commune Club. Surrounding it are the Suitcase House, Furniture House, See And Seen House, Distorted Courtyard House, Airport House and Cantilever House. Other villas are the Bamboo Wall, Shared House, The Twins, Forest House and Split House.
In 2005 Kempinski Hotels took over the management and oversaw the expansion of the project to 42 villas, ranging in size from four to six bedrooms and offering a total of 236 rooms and suites.
The new villas are replicas of one of four of the original designs - Forest, Shared, Cantilever and Bamboo Wall. Their facilities are complemented by an Anantara Spa, kids club, fitness room and conference centre.
The 42 villas are spread across two valleys, known as Walnut Valley and Stone Valley, in the Shuiguan Mountains. While each architect has made a very personal statement in their design, they have all been inspired by local materials, nature and the impressive surroundings to create a distinctly Asian architectural fusion.
The two-storey Commune Club, which houses the hotel's reception, restaurants, bar and a private cinema, is the work of South Korean architect Seung H-Sang. As its name suggests, this is intended as the place where people gather and meet. ‘Architecture here,' says Seung, ‘is not an object to see but a place where people with different background meet and communicate to each other and nature.'
For the building, which covers an area of 4,100m2, Seung chose to use wood, corten steel plate and local stone set in concrete. ‘Corten steel plate rusts in time and changes in colour so that it will match the natural colour changes of the seasons,' Seung explains. ‘Stone in concrete is a combination of exposed concrete and stone from the site itself, which will keep the context of the natural environment.'
The Club house is also a permanent exhibition place for contemporary Chinese art, such as China-China sculptures by Zhuwei, My Left Hand series by Shengqi, Bronze Shoes by Ligang and The Temple series by Tony Scott.
The Suitcase House, by Hong Kong's Gary Chang, is designed to be adaptable thus, according to its creator, seeking ‘to rethink the nature of intimacy, privacy, spontaneity and flexibility.' A series of sliding doors and panels can be used to either partition the house into several rooms or turn it into a larger integrated space.
The building consists of three floors. The lower one contains equipment, service quarters and storage space. The middle floor contains the main functional rooms. ‘By adapting a non-hierarchical layout with the help of mobile elements provided by the envelope,' says Chang, ‘it transforms itself readily according to the nature of the activities, number of inhabitants and personal preferences for degrees of enclosure and privacy.' The top floor houses a series of blinds that may be raised or lowered to subdivide the space.
Japan's Shigeru Ban, the creator of Furniture House, is best known for his innovative use of paper as a building material, including housing units for the survivors of the 1995 Kobe earthquake.
In this case his chosen medium was the indigenous bamboo plywood. ‘A piece of this bamboo plywood, beautifully finished with woven patterns on the outer layer was as heavy and strong as the structural veneer plywood used in Japan,' says Ban. ‘All exterior and interior finishes on the walls as well as the flooring were done in bamboo to ensure consistency of materials throughout the project.'
To take full advantage of the spacious site, Ban adopted the Chinese vernacular style of courtyard architecture. All the rooms were placed around a central courtyard in a simple square footprint. Inside, each of the four walls of the house has a door, behind which is hidden a wardrobe.
Like his fellow countryman, Kengo Kuma of Japan also used bamboo as his dominant building material in Bamboo Wall. ‘We used bamboo as much as possible, since it possesses a significant meaning among both Chinese and Japanese cultures,' says Kuma. ‘Depending on the density of bamboo and its diameter, it offers a variety of options for partitioning the space. In order to make the most of these characteristics, we decided to install a bamboo wall, which is a layer of bamboo along the site's inclination, just like the Great Wall. The Great Wall in the past portioned off two cultures, but this bamboo wall will not only partition but also unite lives and cultures in many different ways.'
The highlight of the villa is another feature that unites Sino-Japanese culture: a tea room. The room, some 10m2 in size, is encased in lean bamboo, is reached by a stone bridge and hangs over water in a strong spirit of Zen Buddhism.
More space age in appearance is the See and Seen House, designed by China's Cui Kai. It aims to do what its name suggest, as Kai explains. ‘With smooth communication between the inside and the outside, the house harmoniously reconciles wide views with living privacy. People inside the house can watch the hills while watched by the hills outside. Endless pleasures are generated by seeing and being seen.' A case in point is the bathroom in the master bedroom. Its outside ‘wall' is a large, floor-length glass sheet that lets the mountain view penetrate inside while the occupant bathes.
The design of the Distorted Courtyard House also does what it says on the label. ‘This house is a ‘distorted' version of the traditional courtyard house,' notes the architect, Hong Kong's Rocco Yim. ‘It is ‘distorted' in two senses. In the literal sense, the footprint is adjusted from the orthodox square shape to conform to the specifies of site topography and view orientation. In the conceptual sense, the house offers the traditional attribute of the courtyard: a tamed and internalised environment providing cosiness and a sense of protection to the private domain, but then transcends it by opening up the communal domain to engage the external wild environment in a more contemporary adventurous spirit.'
The interior spaces are arranged over three floors, including an open courtyard and a small terrace. Decoration is deliberately simple, consisting of white walls, wooden floors and stone paving to help convey a sense of simple rural domesticity.
There are no prizes for guessing where Taiwan's Chien Hsueh-Yi took part of his inspiration with Airport House. The building's three living rooms extend in different directions just like the boarding corridors at an air terminal. However, not many airport's can boast a sauna and the most striking aspect of the structure is a stone wall embedded in the hillside. Made from local stone, it is like the Great Wall in miniature, but also suggest the spinal column of a living creature.
Cantilever House has a dominating presence and there are views over the whole Commune from its roof. This villa is the work of China's Antonio Ochoa, who has used light-coloured wood for the floors and has decorated the living room in what he calls ‘nostalgia-inspiring pink'. He continues, ‘The cantilever house is a natural consequence not of the specific site, but of the slope of the mountain. A consequence not of the specific location of the sun but of the need of it.'
Kanika R'Kul from Thailand is the only female among the 12 designers. Her Shared House stresses communication and the sense of sharing with, for example, delightful twin stone bath tubs.
Her design also concentrates on creating a strong relationship between the indoor and outdoor spaces. through the use of terraces and courts. ‘The house should "expose" the users to the positive sides of the surrounding,' she notes, ‘but at the same time be able to "shield" the users from the natural elements that might be too harsh for human beings to take.'
Sociability and integration are the twin themes behind the creation of Ngee Tan of Singapore. The main building of the Twins contains four bedrooms, the living room, and study, while the annex, reached by a short path, contains the dining room and kitchen.
The spacious, double-height lounge area is reached by large double-leaf doors and contains large windows that provide south-facing views of the valley. There is a fireplace and a suspended staircase leading up to a mezzanine library space, an open-air terrace deck and the master bedroom.
Once again the architect has aimed to bring the inspiring setting into the domestic realm. ‘The House has been designed to seamlessly integrate with its natural environment,' says Tan. ‘It is perforated on all sides by special openings so that even while inside, one is constantly visually connected to the outdoors. This is one illustration of how, rather than protect itself from its context, the house works with and borrows from its natural surroundings to make up its fabric.'
Japan's Nobuaki Furuya has taken his cue from nature in the Forest House. The facade is decorated with long glass sheets that echo the surrounding trees. Seen from afar, the Forest House resembles a bird's nest in a tree. Inside it is light and airy.
Furuya sums up the effect he has achieved. ‘In the interior of the house, scooped out of the woods, people will feel like they are encircled by forest even when in the house.
‘From the rooms with repeated vertical slits, people will view each different scene from their occupied space and the view of nature will change as they move around in the room. After all, a visitor will actively choose their location in the room so that they can enjoy their own spatial experience. It is like "editing" the experience and is the beginning of a continuous interaction between architecture, topography and forest.'
Rounding off this distinctive design dozen is the Split House by China's Yung Ho Chang. This dwelling has a commanding location overlooking the other 11 houses. Its four bedrooms each have a private balcony, while a glass bathroom is wedged between the living room and the dining room.
Chang has seemingly split his creation down the middle and prised it apart, thus allowing the scenery and the surrounding space into the building. The immediacy of the environment is reinforced by a creek that runs beneath the glass-floored entrance room.
Chang has also made the Split House ecological. ‘Its load bearing walls are made of ram earth with a partial wood frame,' he comments. ‘Ram earth construction is a time-honoured building method in China. With minimum environmental impact, it builds a well-insulated wall that makes the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Meanwhile, the incorporation of tradition in this sort of project suggests an effort to create a contemporary Chinese house by building upon images of the past, but not by simply mimicking them.'
Forget the Magnificent Seven - these villas are a delightful dozen that form the heart of an inspiring design experiment.