Located an hour’s drive south of Chengdu, near the picturesque natural lake network, our design brief called for a full-scale resort with iconic architecture to create a landmark destination on the lake.
Project Name: The Spine Resort, Heilongtan
Studio Name: AIM ARCHITECTURE
Location: Meishan, Sichuan, China
Client: China Railway Sichuan Eco-City Investment Corporation
Total Construction Area: 55,017.54m2
Completion: May 2024
Design Principals: Wendy Saunders，Vincent de Graaf
Architectural/Interior Team: Emilio Wang Chen, Kangjin, Steve Do, Laile Li, Ren Yang Tan, George Mocea, Bozhena Hoida
Photography: Dirk Weiblen
The challenge was to design an experience that celebrates the building’s grandeur and its breathtaking views while ensuring an intimate guest experience. Additionally, we sought to create a journey with practical, interesting, and localized connections.
Our architectural concept drew inspiration from the nearby Linpan villages, known for their informal volume placement, green yards, fields, and forests, creating organically grown ecosystems where buildings and nature are in harmony. Similarly, we organized the resort with gardens surrounding the guest room volumes, connected by a covered walkway. Through various building configurations, we realized these connections could become integral to the architecture.
The idea evolved that the main lobby could organically emerge from these walkways, becoming the heart of the resort. The building features a high, vertical entrance that transitions into a low, curved panoramic structure, celebrating the lake’s arrival views.
We designed the roof of the main volume and walkways as a wooden structure, linking it to traditional wooden architecture, boat-like shapes, and sustainability goals. The result is a warm, biophilic, rhythmic spine-like structure guiding visitors through the resort.
These walkways keep guests dry and shielded from the sun. At times, they are wide and flat, almost touching the earth, creating an intimate scale, with views closed on one side and open to gardens on the other. As the walkways approach the guest buildings, the spinal roof structures dramatically open up to light and green courtyard gardens.
This dramatic interplay of compression and opening creates a unique and strong architectural experience, dynamically balancing architecture, nature, and people.
We extend our gratitude to our clients, CREC, for entrusting us with their grand vision, to Club Med for their support, and to the AIM team for their exceptional work.
Special thanks to Vincent Zhou for co-creating this concept vision and Emilio Wang for developing and overseeing its construction.
