Shanghai-based architecture practice DAS Lab has completed a new boutique hotel in Zhongwei, Ningxia, China, featuring earth-toned color palette and smooth details. 

Named Lost Villa Boutique Hotel, the 2,000-square-metre hotel features rustic and modern interiors with clean, pure and elegant details. For more than 200 years, the Yellow River has been the cradle of Dawan Village, and become the witness of its developing cultural context. 

It was not only a frontier city in history, but also a passage way that connects the culture and economy in Serindia area, a precious landscape that combines the Yellow River and the desert. With its natural-toned layout, the new hotel perfectly completes the context that situated in.

Image © DAS Lab

The project is located at the bank of the River. "We do not want an ambitious landmark, instead, we want to create buildings that involves into the nature and become invisible, balancing architecture and nature with humbleness and veneration," said DAS Lab. 

There are 15 rooms in the hotel, each room was injected with different characteristics and has a framed view to the river or to the fruit-bearing forest. By creating different room types, DAS Lab tries to experiment on different models, scales and materials to re-evaluate the relationship between human and nature.

Inheriting from local houses, the hotel is designed with flat houses, terraces, courtyards and reed-topped eaves galleries to encourage more outdoor activities.

DAS Lab used a special treatment of cement mortar on the exterior walls to restore the texture of rammed earth wall from local buildings, so the architecture will look beautifully "old" after being exposed to winds and rains after a while.

The Dawan Village, located in the east longitude 105.19, in the north latitude of 37.50, the lowest temperature in winter reaches minus 20°. Therefore, except the large-scale floor-to-ceiling windows to the landscape, the other facades have limited openings. 

By doing this, the studio managed to re-examine the relationship between windows, lights, space and human, and to further lead to exploring the scenarized expression of our consciousness on spaces.

Light is a key element in the interior. Light is the shadow, when all decorations and colors are visually hidden in the heaviness of space, you will only see the light and the shadow changing with time, playing a symphony on the walls and floors and conveying the spirituality of the space, which stimulates strong emotional resonance.

"We believed that a parent-child room should be both satisfying the freedom for children to play and the functionality for the whole family," added the studio. 

"Therefore we designed a special space for the children in the mezzanine where the adult may feel it too small for themselves but the children can have great fun inside."

Aerial view

Ground floor plan

1st floor plan

2nd floor plan

Section

Section

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Project facts

Project Name: Lost Villa Boutique Hotel in Zhongwei, Ningxia

Project Location: Shapotou district, Zhongwei, Ningxia

Architecture& Interior Designer: DAS Lab

Principal designer: Li Jingze

Design team: Janet, Xiang Guo, Duan Jinjin, Lu Zhangyu

Owner: Ningxia Zhongwei Lost Villa Hotel Management Ltd.

Key materials: concrete, terrazzo, wood veneer, solid board

Area: 2000 m2

Design period: 12/2017-04/2018

Construction period: 05/2018-03/2019

Project description and drawings offered by DAS Lab

All images © Schran Studio / Su Shengliang

> via DAS Lab