Yantai hotel extension
International competition 1st Prize
The existing, already built-up hotel construction has been proved to be not suitable to serve as a 5 star hotel and as a landmark building for the New Development Zone of Yantai. The existing building (15,500 m²) is too small, the number and types of rooms and the space for necessary facilities is not sufficient to fulfil the requirements of a 5 star hotel.
Apart from the wish to create a 5 star hotel in best location which can upgrade the image of the New Development Zone as a whole, it is furthermore intended to integrate additional functions that will serve not only for the hotel itself, but can also be used by the surrounding areas and can attract a wider range of guests, from foreign countries as well.
These additional functions are: conference facilities, shopping and service facilities, entertainment, sports, wellness, and restaurants. More than this, the extended hotel will improve the quality and appearance of the beach area, it will offer exterior facilities like marina, beach bars and a well-designed landscape in order to attract and serve for tourists from outside and for the local inhabitants. The existing pier will receive an endpoint with a symbolic “smoke tower” illuminated and fired during the evening and night. This spectacle will not only serve exclusively for the hotel guests; it can be seen from far away and can be enjoyed by every citizen.
Main goal of the architectural design was to arrange the necessary new building in a way that it is not competing with the existing one, but forming a new unity in which both parts strengthen each other and in which the new building will be experienced as an inseparable part of the whole ensemble. Old building and new component are forming a joint building shape, similar to a big gate.
The new ensemble can also be seen as a group of persons, as father and son: the taller and bigger one protecting and embracing the smaller existing building. Both are united in the circular shape of the podium building.
The new building – in alliance with the existing one – will form a landmark that is certainly unique in the whole world. Gate and focus point at the same time, the shape is easy to remember for everybody. It will stay in the memory not only of the hotel guests.
Moreover it can serve as icon for the international progressiveness of Yantai. But not only the shape of the building, also its advanced and ecological technologies will set new standards in Yantai. The building will reduce the energy consumption in a significant way and will make extensive use of renewable energies in order to show its ecological consciousness.