A Sophisticated Hotel In China Shaped After The Iconic Rubik’s Cube
Architects often have to deal with all sorts of limitation both when building and designing their projects. While that can sometimes have a negative impact on the project, there are also cases when these limitations serve as a source of inspiration and push the design into a completely new and exciting direction. One of the best examples in this case is the Cube Hotel which was completed in 2020 by studio SU Architects.
It’s located in Huzhou, China and is a part of the Megan Mountain International Tourism Resort. The team faced a set of specific restrictions, namely the fact that the building height could be no more than 12 meters and the total footprint could not go over 140 square meters. After doing some calculations, the architects came up with a really cool plan. Since 140 square meters is basically a 12 m x 12 m area, they decided to go with a geometric cube design. At the end of the day, everything adds up perfectly.
The team tried to avoid including many cultural references in the design so they chose a more general and universally known symbol as a source of inspiration: the Rubik’s cube. As you can see, the building is structured on three floors and each floor has a set of three floor-to-ceiling windows on each side. The black frame gives the hotel the distinctive Rubik’s cube structure. Three different types of glass were used for the square windows across the facades of the hotel and that’s in order to offer different degrees of exposure and privacy. Some feature transparent glass which gives them beautiful panoramic views over the gorgeous landscape, some use U-shaped glass and some are made of glass bricks for added privacy. The first floor is where all the common areas and the reception are situated and the two upper floors contain 6 guest bedroom suites.