Yangshuo County has a history going back 1,400 years and is located in the south-east of Guilin city near the West Bank of the Lijiang River. ‘Guilin scenery is the finest under heaven, and Yangshuo is the closest place to Guilin’ is an ancient folk saying summarising the unparalleled natural scenery of Yangshuo.
Along with the recent rapid development of the local tourism industry, some of the local modern developments cannot meet requirements, so the county government decided to plan and develop three sites to enhance the overall attractiveness for tourism. It can be a hard task to design three major new buildings in such a traditional environment surrounded by the beautiful natural landscape which is also highly protected regardless as to who is driving the development.
And achieving an integrated or, at the very least, a coherent co-existence between the traditional and the contemporary while incorporating local cultural characteristics creates a significant challenge.