Keqiao Boutique Hotel

Keqiao Boutique Hotel is located outside of the Keqiao scenic area, which is mostly dominated by newly built traditional Chinese houses surrounding the historical core of Keqiao village. In this type of village, waterways are the major means of transport and the backbone of the urban fabric. The gray-blue, tile covered pitched roofs of the adjacent old town connect to the landscape. The roofs and the landscape blur each other's boundaries, and the roofs become metaphorical hills.



The site sits between the old town and the general urban area with its standardized residential buildings. The hotel needs to deal with this discontinuous urban-scape and also harmonize with the historical water town, yet not through the simple mimicry of form.



Through the manipulation of landscape profiles, the roof/hill topographies cut through each other and form a habitable landscape. The spaces in between are filled with varied water bodies. The buildings above, like the bridges of ocean liners, connect different bodies of water separated by the aligned hills, and offer poetic views overlooking the roofs of historical KeqThe design composes a series of curves presenting the ambiguous section of roof/hill, under which hotel public spaces are nesting in. The ground is filled with water at first place, the intersect gives different width to the water, thus, a canal system like the old water town appears on the site. Guest entrance under the hill takes cars to the basement level(B1), the roof landscape cuts open B1 to invite sunlight to the underground guest entrance hall.



Public spaces are connected by canals, lakes and water courtyards. The connected roof/hill has been perforated with careful analysis of the space underneath to provide circulation, natural light and appropriate atmosphere. The roof and the water interplay in the way of the famous Keyan ancient mining site, which the carved stone submerged in water. Most of guest rooms are lifted above the public roof, like bridges crossing mountains. They are carefully orientated to maximize the view, and connected by bridges into a ring stacking on top of the roof/hills.