Platinum A' Design Award Winner 2025
SHXDAL's Xichang Joyhub Air Hotel exemplifies contemporary hospitality architecture's evolution toward contextually responsive, landscape-integrated resort typologies that honor vernacular building traditions while embracing modernist transparency and material honesty, the design achieving a sophisticated synthesis that positions this cluster of residential pavilions within broader conversations about sustainable tourism development, biophilic design principles, and the architecture of wellness and retreat, the compositional achievement demonstrates mastery of site planning and spatial orchestration, establishing clear hierarchies through the luminous central pavilion that functions as both visual anchor and communal heart while distributing smaller-scale residential volumes in rhythmic arrangement that creates intimate courtyard enclosures and preserves sight-lines toward the dramatic mountain landscape, the chromatic restraint evidences discernment and confidence, allowing the architecture to recede gracefully into its natural setting while the carefully calibrated warm interior illumination signals inhabitation and welcome without competing with the sublime atmospheric effects of the transitional twilight hour, technical accomplishment manifests in the precise detailing of standing-seam metal roofing systems that reference agricultural and rural building traditions while achieving contemporary performance standards, the integration of extensive glazing within timber-clad volumes demonstrating sophisticated environmental control and a commitment to maximizing natural daylight and view connections, the landscape architecture deserves particular commendation for its naturalistic yet carefully orchestrated arrangement of indigenous planting, water features, and stone elements that soften architectural geometries while enhancing the sense of being nested within rather than imposed upon the mountainous terrain, the pedestrian circulation system establishes processional dignity without formality, the generous pathway dimensions and considered paving materiality inviting leisurely movement and contemplative pauses, the evening capture timing proves inspired, the blue hour's magical light rendering the built forms as luminous lanterns that offer sanctuary and warmth against the cooling mountain dusk, this liminal temporal moment amplifying themes of transition, refuge, and the hospitality gesture of providing shelter, the design appears to meditate upon questions that have occupied architects and hospitality designers across centuries: how can built environments enhance rather than diminish natural beauty, how can architecture serve both communal gathering and individual retreat, how can contemporary construction methods and material palettes honor regional building wisdom while addressing present-day performance and experiential expectations, how can the designed environment support wellness, restoration, and the temporary withdrawal from quotidian demands that travel and retreat offer, the work invites viewers to consider their own relationship to landscape, to contemplate the qualities that transform mere shelter into genuine refuge, to reflect upon architecture's capacity to frame and heighten our experience of natural phenomena, the careful balance between openness and enclosure, transparency and privacy, the individual dwelling and the larger community, and perhaps to imagine themselves as guests approaching this tranquil mountain retreat as daylight softens into evening's first stars, what stories of respite and renewal might these glowing pavilions shelter, what conversations and quiet contemplations might unfold within these carefully crafted spaces suspended between earth and sky.
Xichang Joyhub Air Hotel is located on the north shore of Qionghai Sea, which is designed to symbolize a poetic living experience. Create a garden style upscale leisure resort hotel experience in Xichang with a fusion of humanities and natural ecology. Key materials such as artistic paint, wood printed aluminum panels, stone, and wood finishes create a tranquil atmosphere, giving the hotel a unique character. Grey bricks, pitched roofs, and rammed earth walls are reimagined within the interior, where light toned finishes, neutral wooden panels, and deep hued marble create a harmonious space.