GWP Architects: Winner of International Residential Architecture Awards 2021. In the long and narrow country of Japan, Hokkaido embraces the growth of all things with its natural and pure beauty, and many products from this region are blooming in the cleanest appearance. The Niseko Ski Resort, built by teams from China, Britain, and Japan, stands here. The British team is responsible for the apartment design, the Japanese team is responsible for the production of local construction drawings, and the Chinese GWP team is responsible for the key benchmarking projects, the design of Hokkaido Hot Spring Resort Hotel. The project is located in Hayama, Kutchan-cho, Abuta-gun, Hokkaido, about 2 minutes away from Gran Hirafu Ski Resort, with forests to the north and wilderness to the southeast, overlooking Hokkaido’s iconic snowy Mount Yotei. Facing the beautiful and clean natural environment, the design challenge for the team is how to estabilish a connection between human, architecture and nature with a unique scenario-style design within the limited building area.

The GWP team hopes to build a unique architectural image based on the beauty of the balance between nature and man-made. It believes that the project should be beautiful and comfortable, and also derived from nature and returning to nature. Taking the iconic snow-capped mountain of Hokkaido as the design inspiration, we envisaged that the clouds and fog surrounding the snow-capped mountain will form the dynamic appearance of the architecture. When viewed from a distance, the architecture is in a state of ups and downs that blends perfectly with the snow mountain, forest and wilderness, forming a visual sense as if living in mountains and clouds.

The design of the architecture structure fully demonstrates the design concept that the lightness of floating. The edge of the facade is made of GRC material, which makes the building look lighter, softer and more agile while showing the exquisite craftsmanship that form a dynamic expression of the cloud shape of the architecture, and the clouds surrounding the snow-capped mountains are like ribbons floating from a distance to the site.

Following the concept of co-existence with the environment, we advocate more use of natural ventilation and natural lighting in the design of the project, thereby reducing the scale and running time of energy-consuming equipment such as lighting and reducing carbon emissions. The materials mostly use natural environmental protection materials, discarding too much decorativeness to restore simplicity. Put all the cabinets in the space into the wall, emphasizing that the space is clean and tidy while improving the space utilization.

Returning to nature is a free and calm attitude to life, and it is the taste of life and aesthetics. We are eager to use the most primitive natural beauty to strengthen this free beauty of enjoying time and guide to return to pure truth.

Project Details
Firm
GWP Architects

Project Name
Hokkaido Hot Spring Resort

Architect/Designer
GWP Architects

International Residential Architecture Awards Category
Private Residential Concept

Project Location
Hokkaido, Japan

Team
Guowei Zhang

Country
China

Photography ©Credit
©GWP Architects

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Founded in Boston, USA, GWP has set up China regional headquarters and overseas project branches in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, China. With international vision and expertise, GWP has carried out project practices in such specialized fields as urban planning and architectural design integration. GWP adheres to the concept of “Global Wisdom Partnership”, takes “balance between creativity and practicality” as the design purpose, and enhances the comprehensive value of projects from multi-dimensional thinking. The business scope mainly covers super-tall headquarters, commercial complex, ecology tourism, culture and art center and other types of architecture design.