Business Hotel in Changsha

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Client: China State Construction International Investment (Hunan) limited

Location: Changsha, Hunan, China

site area: 10.6ha

Design: April-June 2018

Design Stage: conceptual scheme of masterplanning equivalent to RIBA Working Stage 1-2

Design team: HMD(Shanghai) and Pro-Form Architects ltd (Jing Wu, Danyal Raza, Aysha Utoshi), in collaboration with Hunan Provincial Institute of Architectural Design and Research limited.

Concept:

Located on the west part an office-park site, this modestly sized hotel plays several roles: providing 180 hotel rooms and associated functions, catering for medium-sized events such as exhibition, conference and weddings, and offering daily amenities to the office park users and further afield. Therefore it’s important to allow maximum flexibility among the users of three main functions: hotel guests, event attendees and daily visitors/users from the adjacent office park and villages, who sometimes can be users of all the facilities.

To harmonies the people’s movement and logistic and service requirement, a circular landscaped courtyard, defined by a glazed circular corridor, is planned to streamline the unforeseeable access from three directions and internal movements among more than three function zones. Other features include:

• Two miniature Chinese/Japanese garden are inserted between the circular space and the rectangular space.
• Multi-functional hall with modularized skylights is mainly aimed for larger event such as conferences and banquets/weddings, serviced by commercial kitchen and a serial of make-up preparation rooms and stages;
• The main hall is planned in such a way that it can be subdivided into two smaller halls by acoustic retractable partitions, without compromising the servicing and auditorium functions;
• Outside the main hall, a common buffer zones with double space ceiling height allows the guest waiting registering etc upon arrival;
• Around the circular courtyard and circulations, three similar smaller shared spaces can be hired to smaller catering units such as tea/wine/café etc;
• The north of the site is reserved for exhibition logistics (delivery/service/loading etc)
• Three hotel lifts are placed facing the Rear Lake to take advantage of views
• landscaped and paved main roof is accessible via an external stair;
• A GRC panel shading system, three-dimensionally moulded into ‘wave/ripple’ shapes, is designed to establish a symbolic link between the theme of this development and the Rear Lake in its immediate and primary context.