Hotel Indigo Nalati is a dispersed hotel complex set within the grasslands of Xinjiang, where architecture operates as a mediator between nomadic cultural memory and a vast alpine landscape shaped by seasonal change.
Hotel Indigo Nalati Technical Information
- Architects: H2 Architecture Design Group, CCD / Cheng Chung Design
- Location: Nalati Town, Xinyuan County, Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, China
- Gross Area: 13,052 m2 | 140,500 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2021 – 2025
- Photographs: © Wang Ting
The project translates nomadic spatial logic into a contemporary setting, allowing light, movement, and seasonal rhythms to organize daily experience.
– CCD / Cheng Chung Design
Landscape as Framework: Site, Geography, and Settlement Logic
Located at the junction of the Duku Highway and the Ili scenic loop, the hotel occupies a site defined by movement, vast visibility, and geographic transition. Rather than asserting a singular architectural presence, the project positions itself as part of a broader territorial condition, framed by open steppe and the distant Tianshan Mountains. The site functions equally as threshold and refuge, where arrival is shaped by gradual immersion rather than abrupt contrast.
The master plan adopts a dispersed configuration that aligns with nomadic settlement logic. Individual building volumes are distributed across the terrain, connected through winding pedestrian paths and forested buffers. This strategy avoids large-scale consolidation, allowing each structure to maintain a measured relationship with the land. From a distance, the ensemble reads less as a complex and more as a loose aggregation embedded within the landscape.
Courtyards, clearings, and transitional outdoor spaces operate as connective tissue between architecture and terrain. Circulation is intentionally indirect, encouraging slow movement and frequent orientation toward the surrounding environment. The landscape remains an active participant in the spatial experience, tempering the built form and reinforcing a sense of environmental continuity.
Cultural Translation: Nomadic Typologies and Seasonal Narratives
References to nomadic life are embedded through abstraction rather than literal reproduction. The spatial logic of yurts and auls informs proportions, enclosure, and hierarchy, particularly in the emphasis on centralized gathering spaces and layered thresholds. These precedents shape the project’s architectural grammar without resorting to overt imitation.
The organizing narrative draws from the concept of mausym, or season, framing the project as a cyclical journey rather than a static object. Variations in light, texture, and material density articulate temporal change, allowing interior spaces to register shifts in weather and daylight. Seasonal awareness is spatialized through skylights, filtered openings, and controlled transitions between enclosed and open areas.
Cultural references appear as spatial cues integrated into materials and construction. Felt crafts, wood carving, and pastoral motifs are employed selectively, operating as tactile layers rather than surface decoration. These elements maintain continuity with local traditions while remaining legible within a contemporary architectural language.
Arrival and Communal Space: Light, Thresholds, and Collective Ritual
The sequence of arrival is structured through a series of layered thresholds. Curved canopies and shaded drop-off areas mediate the exposed conditions of the steppe, creating a gradual shift from exterior openness to interior focus. Light plays a critical role in this transition, defining paths and emphasizing moments of pause.
At the core of the communal interior, the lobby adopts a domed volume that recalls the spatial organization of a yurt. Vertical openness is balanced by an inward orientation, establishing a place of gathering rather than display. A modern hearth anchors the space, reinforcing notions of collective ritual through spatial arrangement rather than symbolic gesture.
Material contrasts are restrained and deliberate. Brick surfaces provide weight and thermal presence, while wood elements introduce warmth and tactility. Filtered daylight moves across these surfaces throughout the day, reinforcing a subdued atmosphere shaped by duration and use rather than visual impact.
Interiors as Intimate Landscapes: Guestroom and Social Spaces
Guestroom design reinterprets the yurt’s structural principles through skylights and lattice-inspired partitions. Light is drawn from above, establishing a centralized spatial focus that organizes rest, circulation, and contemplation. This spatial clarity is supported by a limited palette that emphasizes texture over color contrast.
Interior surfaces reference felt traditions and carved woodwork, translating domestic nomadic practices into durable architectural elements. Rather than functioning as narrative illustration, these components provide depth, acoustic softness, and tactile variation. The rooms read as contained environments shaped for duration and bodily comfort.
Social spaces, including the restaurant and bar, extend these principles through circular planning and curved circulation paths. Programmatic boundaries remain fluid, allowing dining, movement, and observation to overlap. Visual continuity between interior seating and exterior views situates everyday activities within a broader environmental field, reinforcing the project’s emphasis on lived experience over fixed form.
About CCD / Cheng Chung Design (HK)
CCD / Cheng Chung Design (HK) is an interior design studio based in Hong Kong, recognized for its culturally grounded and experience-driven approach to hospitality design. The studio’s work emphasizes narrative continuity, material sensitivity, and the integration of local traditions into contemporary spatial frameworks, translating cultural memory and sensory experience into refined interior environments.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Client: Xinjiang Huamei Resort Tourism Co., Ltd.
- Other contributors: VI Design by CCD·ATG BEYOND
- Other contributors: Material Platform by IDEAFUSION
