yoshimasa tsutsumi renovates and extends chinese housing into tsingpu baisha retreat hotel

located in baisha village, yunnan province, yoshimasa tsutsumi’s newly-built project is one of the old houses in the rural area which are being renovated into resort hotels targeting for chinese city dwellers. overlooking the neighboring jade dragon snow mountain, ‘tsingpu baisha retreat’ is covered with local stones and is fixed on the existing wooden structures.

tsutsumi’s team was challenged to reuse the four existing houses and the main gate, also build new buildings in irregular shaped extended site around them. the architects set the combination of randomly stacked stone volumes to make various cozy platforms for enjoying the view of the snow mountain and the village.

the roofs of the hotel complex are regularly arranged to let buildings harmonize with the traditional surrounding environment. as a result, the exposed wooden frame structures and wall surfaces were compared with the hard outer shell of wuhua-stones, so the lightness and the heaviness form a sharp contrast. for the external hollowstone wall, to have both floating feeling and solemn presence, the plane of each stone was made trapezoidal to conceal the laminated line on the wall surface.