Naera Hotel Resort & Art Gallery — Xitang, China

The lighting concept very much follows the clients' desire to make the resort unique revolving around organic farming and art. Throughout the hotel resort art plays a major role. Part of the hotel experience is a light show that plays every hour. The architectural concept is designed with all public spaces (hotel lobby, reception, restaurant, bar, library and tearoom) facing the central courtyard. Each of them a “box” protruding into the courtyard which is predominantly a water feature with some trees. At night the individual boxes light up and become a feature, with the water surface creating an additional reflection effect adding to the magic. The hotel rooms face the interior courtyard also allowing the guest to enjoy it from their rooms. The lighting design emphasis the uniqueness of the architectural concept and combines that with an element of intrigue and yet maintaining the privacy. Activity in the hotel can be observed by the movement of people’s silhouettes in the other spaces creating intrigue without being to intruding. The lighting creates a continued magic and transforms the place at night in a totally different experience. The Naera Hotel Xitang concept (organic food farming, art gallery, spa and light show) is the very first to be rolled out and has been adopted for further roll out in future hotel expansion plans throughout China.

All technology is based on the latest tuneable and RGB LED lighting. The Main challenge has been to integrate lighting within the architecture and most of all integrate the RGB light show in a way that it does not affect normal operation or safety of the hotel guests. This was achieved by using RGB white lights allowing the combination of both whit and coloured light from the same fixtures. The inclusion of an integrated light show as part of the hotel lighting experience is considered a new and innovative approach as it involves the architectural configuration and design with lighting al already in mind. The client feedback since opening has been fantastic stimulating the owners to move forward to implementing more in the very near future.