Alila Wuzhen: A Modern Village in Organic Growth

Lu Hao and Zhang Xun - G O A's Award-Winning Hotel Design

The design inspiration for Alila Wuzhen is rooted in the "minimalist" aesthetic tendency of Oriental culture. The architects extracted the concise, exquisite, and silent aesthetic interest of buildings south of the Yangtze River, abandoning straightforward decorative elements. Instead, they introduced fine materials, concise structures, and quietly elegant colors with modern tones. This approach allowed individual buildings of pure forms to repetitively emerge and organically grow, reflecting the "complicated cluster" structural characteristic of traditional villages.

Alila Wuzhen's unique properties lie in its retention of the spatial forms, basic elements, architectural scales, and color relations of traditional tribes. The tranquil water surface and pure architectural form are well coordinated, perfectly reflecting the multi-level and semi-transparent relations between buildings, between buildings and plants, as well as between buildings and water surface. The overall pattern takes villages south of the Yangtze River as its prototype, creating a unique architectural community where history encounters the contemporary era.

The realization of this design involved the extensive application of glass, large span of door leaf, and large size of overhanging eave, forming a continuous and orderly frame. With well-proportioned shapes, volumes of different sizes, and orderly layout, the building meets various functional demands. The architects also explored the possibility of traditional space reconstruction, endowing streets, lanes, courtyards, and other spatial types with new functions and spirits.

The project started design in 2014 and finished in 2018. Throughout the design process, the team faced the challenge of "imitation" and "reconstruction" of water towns south of the Yangtze River. The hotel has completed its inheritance of local culture and the spatial prototype of villages south of the Yangtze River, tallying well with the special demands of the hotel for "unconventional" experience and "dramatic" scenarios.

Alila Wuzhen is a testament to the prodigy and wisdom of Lu Hao and Zhang Xun - G O A. It is a venerated product and a bright idea that advances art, science, design, and technology, embodying extraordinary excellence and significantly impacting the world with its desirable characteristics. The design was awarded Golden in A' Architecture, Building and Structure Design Award in 2020, a prestigious accolade granted to marvelous, outstanding, and trendsetting creations.