ARES Partners

Hotel LongJi is located in the breathtaking Dragon‘s Backbone Rice Terraces scenic village in GuangXi Province China. The village is about 80 kilometers north of Guilin.
This hotel consist two buildings which linked by a meandering walkway and three viewing platforms. There are also two underground spaces below the viewing platform. The spatial dialogue between the architecture, the unique site topography and the breathtaking scenery is the main focus of our design.

Because of the unique topography, our client owns the horizontal surface of the land as well as the vertical surface of each rice terrace on the site. This made the possibility of creating interesting space at various levels of the rice terrace. We created one reading room and two guest suites by carving under the rice terrace surface. There was one original building on the site but it was collapsed quite some time ago. We followed the footprint of this existing building and redesigned a four story tall building which houses fourteen guest suites. The other three story tall building is a new addition to the land. The two buildings positioned at a 120 degree angle in order to optimize the viewing effect.

Fourteen guest suites are in a four story tall building and two guest suites with a spectacular view of the rice terrace are located under the viewing platform. The three story tall building houses a small reception area, an all-day dining and a spa on the top level. The restaurant is located one level below ground floor with an outdoor dining space. Cedar wood and local stone are the main material for the building. Perforated metal panel is being used as the balustrade of the walkway and viewing platform. This creates a continuous silver ribbon as a resemblance of the rice terrace landscape.