JW Marriott Hotel Sanya Dadonghai Bay / W&R Group

Curated by 韩爽 - HAN Shuang

Architects: W&R Group; W&R Group
Area: 18000 m²
Year: 2018
Photographs:Lin Lv

Mountain, sea and sky of Dadonghai Bay
“This is a hotel landscape upgrading project. Having carefully examined the surrounding environment and the original landscape style of the project, we put forward higher requirements for the renovation of the landscape: maximizing the utilization of coastal landscape.”

JW Marriott Hotel Sanya Dadonghai Bay is located by the Dadonghai Bay, Sanya City, Hainan Province. The Dadonghai beach is flat and soft, stretching gently up to a kilometer long. As a winter resort, Dadonghai has been famous at home and abroad for its "warm water, white sand and flat beach". It is an early developed, mature seaside resort in Sanya. This is a landscape design project for the reconstruction of the external environment due to brand upgrading of the hotel. It enjoys a very mature environmental foundation.

Although the original site is near the sea, it keeps no connection with the seascape because of the existing spatial form. The plants have even blocked the sight of the sea. This site has great limitations on the design. The primary issue of the design is to solve the obstructed view from the original site in the hotel environment

On the basis of the open view of the sea, we are thinking about how to form a new design language, to discard all objects and unfold a full picture scroll of nature to the tourists. With the design, we hope to have a natural, immaterial, dynamic structure to merge with the sea.

The way to talk to the sea
"While we stay by the sea, if we can't feel the breeze of the sea, or extend our sight to the sea, such a place won’t have the seaward characteristics. We need to recover a way to talk to the sea." The creation should conform to the spatial form of the natural elements of the seaside, letting people interact with the sea. Finally, the designer is inspired by the sea breeze to present a zigzag shaped, frozen breeze-like structure with dynamic, irregular lines.

The landscape design is based on the analysis of the wind and light environment of the seaside. To guide the sight line to the sea, we have designed a mirror-like waterscape between the site and the sea. The see breeze-like artistic structure lies in the water and light.

The static artistic structure is reflected on the water surface, giving a dynamic sense to the static space. Here, the nonobjective sea is transformed into variable light, shadow and wind, as if people see the sea again when sitting, lying, and walking.

Height difference between the mountain and sea
“In the end, we decided to give up the previous technique of encircling the landscape, and open the offshore area completely to tourists, with the hotel landscape integrated with the mountains, sea and sky of Dadonghai Bay.” The site, located at the seaside, is about 10 meters higher than the beach. The original hotel landscape was built by offsetting the height difference with two platforms. But from the actual effect, the huge height difference between the upper and lower platforms leads to extremely poor experience for tourists.

The original plan wasted a great deal of the environmental resources due to the sea-viewing enclosure. The designer hopes to have a better space expression to show the view of the sea. The final design adopts a "hierarchical drop" to eliminate the height difference. Such an approach allows visitors to see the sea at a glance at the entrance to the hotel, creating a spatial form conforming to natural elements.