The Zhoushan Summer Hotel was completed five years ago. Adding balconies and changing the facades improved the limitations that the original square-shaped houses had in many aspects of the interior and exterior space. With the rising fame of the hotel, this design approach had become a most welcome facade style. Nowadays, most newly built houses here are white-walled with square windows; it is now hardly building “European-style villas.”
© ZHU Yumeng
However, this rapid transformation has also led to some unintended consequences. The village has seen a threefold increase in the number of bed-and-breakfasts, resulting in a haphazard, disorganized settlement of roughly finished, self-built houses. This unchecked, rapid development poses a significant risk to the village’s unique charm and its natural beach-front resources. It’s clear that a more sustainable approach to growth is urgently needed.
The Sommerhotel grew together with the village and was allowed to have two houses whose backyards were directly adjacent and composed of three stories. The houses were not particularly conspicuous among many other new buildings, so they were handled very sensitively. On the seaward-oriented building, the facade remained unchanged; extended horizontal windows produced a characteristic front with solid lines and full-length sunshade blades on the hillward-oriented building, which provided a strong contrast to uniformity.
© Kangshuo TANG
This renovation was don...