YongLi Red Tile Plaza by We&Arch

Nestled deep within the expansive woodlands of Chongzhou in Sichuan Province, YongLi Red Tile Plaza offers a secluded escape from urban life, accessible solely via a winding forest path. The design embraces the natural context, prioritizing harmony with its verdant surroundings while delivering a sophisticated hospitality experience. The architects approached the project as an abstract settlement, integrating three distinct architectural scales: monumental pitched roofs, mid-scale geometric volumes, and clusters of intimate functional units. These layers are unified through a subtle, underlying structural logic that ensures visual coherence and spatial fluidity.

Monumental Entrance and Reception

The centerpiece of the composition is a dramatic 12-meter-high gabled entrance that cantilevers four meters outward, evoking a sense of ecclesiastical grandeur while functioning as the main portal into the complex. Adjacent to this monumental gateway, the reception center emerges as a serene, white barn-like structure seemingly floating on water. Accessed via the main corridor, the reception forms a delicate threshold between the forested exterior and the interior of the plaza. A gracefully curved bridge traverses the gable opening, leading visitors toward an elevated art gallery space and initiating a fluid sequence of movement that unfolds progressively through the site.

Dining and Social Spaces

YongLi Red Tile Plaza offers a collection of dining pavilions arranged in a village-like configuration. Each pavilion is conceived as an independent architectural volume, accompanied by its own private garden, creating intimate spaces for culinary experiences. White-clad garden cloisters connect these volumes, guiding visitors through a choreographed sequence that balances privacy and communal engagement. Lush vegetation frames the pathways, enhancing the interplay between built form and natural surroundings. The design of these spaces emphasizes tranquility, encouraging lingering moments while maintaining visual and spatial continuity across the complex.

Banquet Facilities and Architectural Rhythm

The central banquet facilities demonstrate exceptional spatial efficiency, organized beneath expansive mono-pitch roofs that echo the geometry of traditional Chinese architecture. The careful lowering of eaves to a human-scaled 2,350 millimeters transforms the connecting arcades into framed galleries overlooking curated waterscapes. This subtle modulation of roof lines creates a dynamic visual rhythm, reminiscent of an unrolled Chinese landscape scroll, with each step revealing new perspectives and compositions. Guests move through the covered walkways as if navigating a living painting, where water, vegetation, and architectural form are in constant dialogue.

Innovative Engineering and Structural Elegance

A remarkable engineering feat underpins the design: nearly 100-meter-long column-free corridors are achieved through innovative steel cantilevers. This structural solution eliminates visual obstructions and enhances the horizontal emphasis of the architecture, creating an impression of floating volumes above reflective water surfaces. The cantilevers also amplify the poetic quality of the space, allowing visitors to experience a sense of weightlessness and serenity while traversing the complex. Through these interventions, the architecture manages to be both technically rigorous and aesthetically compelling, merging functionality with a refined expressive language.

Integration with Nature and Poetic Expression

The project’s spatial sequences and layered volumes establish a dialogue with the surrounding forested context, mediating between architectural presence and natural landscape. The strategic composition of forms and scales ensures that each building element, from monumental gateways to intimate pavilions, responds thoughtfully to its environment. Water, light, and vegetation are integral to the design, contributing to a reflective and contemplative atmosphere that enhances visitor experience. YongLi Red Tile Plaza exemplifies how contemporary hospitality architecture can achieve both operational precision and poetic expression, creating spaces that are at once visually striking, contextually sensitive, and functionally versatile.

Photography: Hao Chen