Anadu Hotel by Studio8

Anadu Resort is a 1,200-square-metre boutique hotel on the northern slope of the Moganshan range in Huzhou, Zhejiang, developed by Changxing Yuhuaxin Investment and designed by Studio8 (Shirley Dong and Andrea Maira), who also created the brand identity. The 30,000-square-metre sloped courtyard overlooks Chenqi Village to the east, Fenghuang and Dagang hills to the south, white-tea terraces to the west and bamboo forest to the north. Studio8's founding concept—be with nature, converse with yourself—became the brand slogan find yourself in nature, and the project maximises local resources in materials, design elements and even food. Noting that the site lacked water, the designers added still pools because water instantly calms; water is paired with tea, mountain and bamboo to build a second dimension of repose. Rather than starting from the building form, the design starts from the relation between guest and nature. Each of the three floors carries an infinity-edge waterscape: a swimming pool on the ground, an infinity water balcony on the south-facing second floor, and a full-roof infinity pool on the third. Each room is oriented to its surrounding natural feature and named accordingly: Wencha faces the tea terraces and ground-floor pool, with blue-green materials; Wangshan faces the distant mountains across an inner waterway, using black-grey and natural stone; Tingzhu faces the bamboo sea, with beige-pink interiors and bamboo-silk objects; and Yingtian, the only third-floor room, opens north to a shaft of daylight and south-east across 270 degrees of tea, mountain and bamboo, stepping onto the full-roof infinity pool. Each room is only two-sided, a simple L that on one side establishes privacy with oneself and on the other opens dialogue with nature; the L shape also became Anadu's visual identity, with a unique graphic symbol for each room. Completed in 2017 and photographed by Sven Zhang, the hotel is located in Chenqi Village, Heping Town, Changxing County.