Text description provided by the architects
Set in the Club Med Joyview Thousand Island Lake resort in Chun'an, the Mediterranean-style hotel for the Hangzhou Asian Games sub-village treats architecture and landscape as punctuation marks within the grand natural text of the lake, adding rhythm to the mountains and water and poetry to its islands. The landscape team from L&A Design respects local character while drawing on the French Mediterranean DNA of Club Med, the world's largest resort chain; the design extracts the visual symbols of island, mountain and water and weaves them through every lifestyle detail, telling a narrative of island-and-water leisure. At the entry, gable walls frame the arrival road and heighten its ceremony, while scattered island-like mounds recall local red weathered stone; warm light strips tucked beneath each mound read like golden belts echoing the distant lake. A terrace water feature stretches the view horizontally toward the open water, dissolving the boundary between hotel and lake, while hanging folk-lanterns and reflections in the water mirror extend the vertical scale. In the villa district, the team exploits existing grade changes and native weathered rock to build cascading water features and, for children, climbing routes up low slopes that culminate in a sandbar-island energy field. The 50,506-square-meter site carries 20,202 square meters of built area and a 50 percent green ratio, and the project embodies a localized design that returns to the roots of place: the island is treated not as a static landscape but as a way of life, and the landscape itself is invited to speak to those who move through it, leaving room for ease and warmth. With the completion of the design, life itself begins.