The Intercontinental Sanya Resort comprises of a hotel with 350 rooms and related facilities. The hotel stretches from a busy entertainment spine to the natural forest of the rocky point.

One third of the rooms are located in a 10-storey curved linear block that frames the arrival space. Two thirds of the rooms are located in huge water courtyards, and are more resort-like in feel. These rooms are an innovative hybrid of detached villas and room blocks. Each room has a private open air garden bathroom, and a detached cabana that is reached via a bridge or garden.

The design combines masterplanning, landscape, architecture and interiors to set up a series of views and vistas to the sea, framed by coconut trees, reflected in water, and then reframed again with stone, timber and fabric, ensuring every room has a special view. The design of the various public areas varies from urban and formal to casual and beachy.

The entire resort is designed as a patchwork of inhabited gardens, giving a foreground to the views of the owner�s highrise apartments behind. The design is inspired by Chinese screens, palaces and compounds, interpreted in a contemporary fashion. The huge precast concrete screen is an aperiodic mathematical tiling.

The hotel is designed to sustainable principles such as passive energy saving design (large overhangs, natural light, cross-ventilation, shaded courtyards, and planted roofs), use of indigenous seasonal landscape and water conservation and recycling.

Photo credits: Patrick Bingham Hall