Construction of Hotel S is completed in Cai village, Dali

18 June 2025 by Zhaoyang Architects

Hotel S is located in Cai village which is adjacent to Dali old town. Because of Dali's increasing popularity as a touristic city, Cai Village gradually transforms from a quiet local village to a chaotic touristic spot. The primary challenge of design is how to create a retreat hotel with Zen atmosphere in a contemporary chaotic rural environment. The arrangement of the building tries to avoid disturbance from these new "Bai-style" houses with uncomfortable sheer scale, meanwhile, to invite more mountain and lake view to the inside. The courtyards in northeast and southwest corner, on one hand help to create peaceful and inward atmosphere, on the other hand improve natural lighting and ventilation. By using rammed earth as main material, the building presents a primitive appearance, to respond the chaotic context and to find a more fundamental relationship with the site.

Zhaoyang Architects

Architect

In 2012, Zhao was selected as the inaugural architectural protégé of the acclaimed Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Under the direction of his mentor Kazuyo Sejima, Zhao designed Home-for-All in Kesennuma to help victims of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Zhao’s design works and interviews have been widely published. He is also invited to speak in Tshinghua University, Tongji University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tohoku University and Geoffrey Bawa memorial lecture, among other places. In 2015, Zhaoyang architects participated in the exhibition “From the Asian Everyday” at Toto gallery Ma in Tokyo. “The architectural works of Yang ZHAO, look modern and abstract, a vision of now, rather than an imitation of past forms, but deep beneath there is an underlying idea that is from the past, the idea of the order in the genus loci, the order of things in a place that give it form, movement, and rhythm. Yang ZHAO strives to knowing the raison d’etre in a place, and then expressing them as they are in the new form of now. The act is courageous and visionary, in sensitively and sensibly responding to the particular conditions of approaching making architecture in a fast changing China.”[1] [1] Erwin Viray, Introductory Essay, The Asian Everyday : Possibilities in the Shifting World, TOTO Publishing, 2015. Erwin Viray is a committee member of TOTO GALLERY・MA and professor of the Department of Design and Architecture in the Kyoto Institute of Technology School of Science and Technology.