Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat. Brick Award 22 Category "Building outside the box". neri & hu design and research office. Outside view
© Pedro Pegenaute

Old bricks writing new history

Brick Award 22

Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat. Brick Award 22 Category "Building outside the box". neri & hu design and research office. Courtyard view
© Pedro Pegenaute

The Brick Wall – Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat

Building outside the box - Category Winner

Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat. Brick Award 22 Category "Building outside the box". neri & hu design and research office. Hallway view
© Pedro Pegenaute

Products used

Facing bricks, roof tiles, paving bricks

Old bricks writing new history

Silver Lake near the Chinese city of Yangzhou is a real tourist trap. This made it the perfect location to build a hotel. And what a hotel it is: the Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat boutique hotel boasts 20 rooms on a 32,000 m2 plot.

The luxury hotel with the old houses

This site used to be home to fishermen and farmers. Before construction began, it was occupied by a warehouse and several small cottages. At the client’s request, these were partially preserved to lend character to the project, the Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat. The design was devised by the Neri&Hu Design and Research Office. It blends the luxury hotel with the old houses in the best Chinese building tradition.

Chinese tradition

The planning process began with a grid that was laid over the site and incorporated the existing buildings. The plan was to create traditional Chinese, single-storey courtyard houses with the exception of a two-storey courtyard house accommodating the library and guest rooms. Partly open and partly closed, greenish-grey and uneven brickwork encompasses all areas, including the four gardens.
 
The precise floor plan generates a network of brick walls and paths that delimit the series of striking inner courtyards. The architects deliberately played with perspectives, openings and vistas. Again and again, views into the individual patios of the reception, restaurant and guest rooms emerge through apertures in the brick walls. Long, geometric expanses of brick corridor inside the building contrast with the idyllic courtyards and blur the boundaries between inside and outside.
 
Away from the enclosure, the site includes a further four-room pavilion on the lake shore and an old warehouse at the northern end that houses a theatre, exhibition spaces and another restaurant. 

„All the walls and floors are made of bricks taken from the area surrounding the complex, which gives the luxurious hotel a very unique sense of history.“ - Neri & Hu Design and Research Office

Making new from old

The clear focus of the project was reusing the existing buildings and 1.2 million recycled bricks. All the walls and floors are made of bricks taken from the area surrounding the complex, which gives the luxurious hotel a very unique sense of history.
 
The bricks were laid in patterns that are as varied as they are unexpected and incorporated into the masonry. Depending on the incidence of light, this creates a choreography of multi-layered spaces that connect the sky with the Earth and pay tribute to the traditional architecture of the region.
 
The Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat is the winning project in the Building outside the box category because it draws from Chinese building culture while managing to implement a strong commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility through recycling. 

Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat. Brick Award 22 Category "Building outside the box". neri & hu design and research office. Courtyard view
© Pedro Pegenaute

Facts & Figures

Project name: The Brick Wall – Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat, Jiangsu, China

Architects   Neri & Hu Design and Research Office

Year of completion   2018

Category   Building outside the box, Category Winner

Products used   Facing bricks, roof tiles, paving bricks



Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat. Brick Award 22 Category "Building outside the box". neri & hu design and research office. Hallway view
© Pedro Pegenaute

Brick Award 22

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