a landscape of courtyards: vector architects’ xirang hotel bridges land and water in jiangsu

xirang hotel: a Juxtaposed Maze

The newly completed Xirang Hotel by Vector Architects unfolds like a quiet maze in Jiangsu’s watery countryside, bridging the elemental and the urban with a choreographed sequence of spaces. Surrounded by the soft, vaporous Taihu Lake to the east and a lively market to the west, the hotel stands at the intersection of civilization and remote nature. In response to this multidirectional context, Vector Architects orchestrates a project that is at once outwardly receptive and inwardly introspective, offering guests a deeply spatial experience rooted in vernacular traditions and sensorial nuance.

The hotel is structured around a modular courtyard concept that anchors its design language. Each courtyard is tailored to a specific program — be it circulation, gathering, or quiet contemplation — and shaped by natural elements such as light, water, and vegetation. These courtyards are not isolated but aggregated into a loosely gridded cluster, with volumes of varying scales and characters gently colliding and coexisting, creating an intimate architectural topography that feels both spontaneous and deliberate.

image © Luo Canhui

Cascading Forms in Dialogue with Landscape

At ground level, Vector Architects’ Xirang Hotel is unified by a continuous covered verandah that threads through all nine courtyards. This passageway forms a spine of movement, guiding visitors eastward down the site’s natural slope. The architects leave the terrain intentionally uneven, with a gentle descent that culminates in a pond, aligning the built environment with the existing landforms. Sloping eaves and tiered rooflines accentuate this gradient, composing a visual rhythm that cascades from Zhushan Mountain to the canal’s edge.

The spatial language is perhaps most palpable in the way each courtyard is crafted as a distinct atmosphere. One is dappled with golden daylight that filters through foliage; another is centered on a sculptural bronze funnel — the Raindrop Atrium — that channels rainfall in a spectacle of sound and motion. These microcosmic environments harness natural elements to evoke sensations of calm, wonder, and even play. The shifting interplay of light and dark, compression and release, amplifies bodily perception and reinforces the tactile quality of the architecture.

the Xirang Hotel responds to four contrasting site conditions in Jiangsu | image © Luo Canhui

A Tower of Light by the Canal

To the east, the Xirang Hotel by Vector Architects opens onto the Camphor Courtyard, a broad garden space that gazes out to Taihu Lake. Guest rooms here are sheltered behind a delicate double-height copper mesh that glows warmly at sunrise and sunset. Along the canal, a striking glass-brick tower, 24 meters tall, serves as a lighthouse-like beacon, its translucency catching the changing sky and offering a vertical counterpoint to the otherwise horizontal layout.

Sightlines are never accidental. Every aperture, canopy, and wall segment is orchestrated to frame a specific view: the curve of a hillside, the shimmer of rippling water, or the movement of boats in the distance. These framed vistas are not static but evolve with the time of day and the weather, generating a dynamic montage of impressions that guests move through — each moment delicately composed, yet always fleeting.

In its layered procession of spaces, Xirang Hotel by Vector Architects resists grand gestures in favor of architectural restraint. What emerges is a poetic balance of enclosure and openness, of structure and scene — a living maze where body, memory, and environment intermingle in quiet dialogue.

the layout is based on a modular courtyard system, each with a unique theme and function | image © Luo Canhui