Aoxin Holiday Hotel

The symbolic vocabulary of Shaun Lee's Aoxin Holiday Hotel speaks through the archetypal language of threshold and ascent, where the stepped platform in the foreground invokes ancient temple approaches and ceremonial processions that prepare the visitor psychologically for elevated experience. The central white column functions as an axis mundi, the world pillar connecting earthly realm to higher aspirations, its luminous vertical presence suggesting clarity, purity, and spiritual aspiration rising through the geological weight of surrounding stone. The grey stone cladding carries deep associations with permanence, geological time, and the enduring stability of mountain and earth, while its warm taupe variations soften any sense of coldness, suggesting instead the living warmth of stone heated by sunlight. The golden arch sculpture at right introduces profound symbolic resonance: the arch as passage, gateway, and transformation; gold as solar energy, enlightenment, and transcendent value; the curved organic form as counterpoint to rectilinear rationality, suggesting perhaps the integration of heart and mind. The bilateral compositional structure invokes balance and harmony, the ancient principle of equilibrium between opposing forces, while the subtle asymmetries prevent static rigidity, suggesting instead dynamic equilibrium. The ascending staircase at left embodies the universal archetype of spiritual journey, each step representing progress toward illumination, the integrated lights marking the path like votive flames along a sacred way. The candle vessels on the landing reinforce this luminous symbolism, suggesting hospitality, welcome, and the ancient tradition of lighting the way for travelers. The overall spatial organization creates a contemporary sacred precinct, a secular temple of hospitality where material refinement and symbolic richness combine to honor the ritual significance of arrival, rest, and departure in human experience.

The hotel is located in Luzhou, Sichuan Province, a city well known for its wine, whose design is inspired by the local wine cave, a space that evokes a strong desire to explore. The lobby is the reconstruction of a natural cave, whose related visual connection extends the concept of the cave and the local urban texture to the internal hotel, thus forming a distinctive cultural carrier. Designers value the passenger's feeling when staying in the hotel, and also hope that the texture of the material as well as the created atmosphere can be perceived on a deeper level.