Taibai Mountain Tang Town · Shitang Fengquan Hotel

The Shitang Fengquan Hotel at Taibai Mountain Tang Town is a new Tang-style cultural-tourism landscape on the northern foothills of Taibai Mountain in Shaanxi, developed by the Tianlang Group, designed by DDON with the timber boardwalk, cherry trees and primary and secondary cascades by Thinking Culture, and built by Shaanxi Luohan Ecological Environment Construction. The design recalls the Tang poet Wang Wei, who twelve centuries ago, among white clouds and pale mists, asked a woodcutter across the water where he might lodge; today the team builds the hotel's introductory landscape around the hotel itself, laying paths and stacking stone to open a new poetic chapter for a new-Tang-style resort town. The landscape structure is organized as nine habitats, and the first four pairs of qualities articulate the design. Inside and outside: beyond the ceremonial threshold lie rustling forest shadows and running water, a different world, where water light and forest shadow shift through the seasons in a gentle balance between worldly and unworldly life. Natural rubble stone carries the memory of mountains, sunlight pours through mist, and a few tallow trees suggest the layered groves of Tang Town; the Tang-style karahafu gable above the porch extends interior and exterior, and wind cuts through the light court. Far and near: standing on Taibai, ringed on three sides by water and facing the mountain, autumn water merges with the long sky. At night, lamps reveal gold and blue harmony on the water, extending distant and near views; pure pine green answers the autumn background, and a robed figure walks the folding bridge. High and low: paths wind through the mountain forest across a nearly five-meter grade change, a classic case of stacking stone and arranging water in garden-making. Entering to the sound of cascades, half-hidden in trees, walking along the stream past lone pines, flowering shrubs and stone, every step is a scene; on the forty-degree slope, autumn leaves fall freely. Deep and shallow: cascades are drawn from nature and return to nature, carrying Taibai water down from the mountain to the Tangyu River, running through wind and rain, with pines, shadows and placed stones condensing the turning of the seasons. Front and rear: front courtyard and rear garden form a world of their own, where one can watch flowers open and fall, with a qin, a pot of wine and a stream of cloud, an ancient pine and a hot-spring bath in a private courtyard that expresses the philosophy of being unmoved by favor or disgrace. Throughout design and construction, the DDON team and the client control team compared and sampled materials, plants and stones, with repeated on-site coordination and full construction supervision; stacking nearly five meters of elevation in a narrow space involved walking the site repeatedly, marking with lime dust, digging and piling until the stone was right, and in the cold Taibai winter, a dozen tallow trees were planted and fixed in a single day, angles adjusted by walkie-talkie until the best viewpoint was achieved.