It’s called Mountain & Cloud Cabin and it’s the latest hotel project from Wiki World + Advanced Architecture Lab, imitating the local landscapes of Yichang County
- By Isabella Prisco
- Original post: https://www.elledecor.com/it/best-of/a35736274/hotel-china-nordic-style-cabin-wiki-world-advanced-architecture-lab/
Green expanses, shadowed forests and open skies above: the new hotspot immersed in nature isn’t hidden in the taiga of the north, but in Yichang, China. Conceived as a scattered hotel, Mountain & Cloud Cabin is built around 18 wooden living units, which each act as independent hotel rooms, a cafeteria and a pool completely immersed in the greenery surrounding the city-prefecture in the province of Hubei facing the Blue River. The project signed off by Wiki World + Advanced Architecture Lab includes five different types of cabins that extend across a surface area ranging between 35 and 65 square meters. The result is an archipelago of chameleonic refuges with a Scandinavian allure that seems to almost float between the clouds. The secret? A reflective cladding that creates an instant map of the four seasons in real time.
“We try to design and build as nature,” explains Mu Wei, one of the architects behind Mountain & Cloud Cabin, where the beautiful mountains of China remind him of a personal experience with the aurora borealis during a trip to Norway. “Cabins seem to come from the future but disappear in nature. They are the viewfinders of nature and breathe freely in the forest.” Like small nests on human scale, the structures “breathe and float” in the forest that envelops them. Helping with the camouflage effect are the construction materials and geometries selected for the buildings themselves. While the reflective metallic plates and wooden grids mirror and imitate nature, the buildings are erected as a sequence of “bridges in the valleys, spaceships in the woods, viewfinders in the tea fields, and stacked buildings on the hillside,” underlines the Wiki World founder.
The different solutions realized to welcome tourists, imagined to respect the rich natural biodiversity offered by the local area, rotate around the concept of a prefabricated home with low energy consumption: the main unit, relying on a heating system built into the floors and fresh air system with an air exchange rate of 100 cubic meters per hour, can be assembled in just one day, reflecting the durability and eco-compatibility of the best sustainable design.
Across a stretch of nearly 1,000 square meters, while the bridge suite crosses fields of tea and the vertical loft rises 14 meters high, the horizontal cabin is molded between the trees, floating on the terrain and opening up to the mountain views of Deng Village. Within these “islands” of Mountain & Cloud Cabin, a minimalist style typical of homes in the North unfolds in a wooden refuge that warms and calms the environment and spirits of those it hosts.
