Marriott Hotel

The Sanya Luneng JW Marriott Hotel landscape renewal is an 18,000-square-metre hotel landscape upgrade in 2018, developed by Luneng Group, located beside Dadonghai Bay in Sanya, Hainan. Dadonghai's flat, soft beach extends for a kilometre; its warm water, white sand and gentle shoreline have long made it one of Sanya's earliest and most mature seaside resorts, a winter swimming and cold-weather retreat. The renewal was triggered by a brand upgrade, but the site already had a mature landscape base; the designers' first problem was that although the hotel faced the sea, the existing layout did not connect to it, and planting even blocked the view. The brief was therefore to open the coastal view to the maximum and invent a new design language that removes all solid objects and unfurls nature as a full picture. The team argues that if, standing by the sea, visitors cannot feel the sea wind or carry sightlines to the water, the place loses its coastal character; the design must create a form that follows coastal natural elements and engages people with the sea. Inspiration comes from the wind itself: dynamic, irregular lines are used to build a zigzag, wind-shaped sculptural structure that appears to have frozen the sea breeze. Analysing coastal wind and light, the designers set a mirror water feature between the site and the sea, so that the wind-like art frame sits between water and sky; its still form is reflected in the water, lending a static space a dynamic meaning. The abstract sea is thus converted into changing light, shadow and wind, and as people sit, lie or walk, they seem to see the sea again. The team abandons the old enclosing strategy and opens the near-shore edge completely to visitors, fusing Dadonghai's mountains, sea and sky with the hotel landscape. Because the site sits more than ten metres above the beach, the previous two-platform layout produced a poor experience; instead, a tiered cascading water system dissolves the elevation as far as possible, so that from the hotel entrance visitors can see the sea at a glance. As construction progressed, the bay revealed itself: silver beach, clear water, strange rocks, splashing waves. Materials include 316 stainless steel, white granite and black galaxy stone, and the design establishes a spatial conversation with the sea from the drop-off onward.