SUNYATA, Datong is a hospitality project set against the eastern edge of Datong’s ancient city, where restored courtyard houses and newly inserted buildings are organized as a contemporary extension of the historic urban fabric. Drawing from the spatial logic of Shanxi residential compounds and the cultural legacy of the Northern Wei, the project uses courtyards, narrow passages, stone thresholds, and restrained material contrasts to construct an architecture of layered movement, tactile depth, and historical continuity.
SUNYATA, Datong Technical Information
- ArchitectsCCD / Cheng Chung Design
- LocationNo. 9 Shiren Street, Pingcheng District, Datong, Shanxi, China
- Gross Area4772 m2 | 51,366 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years2020 – 2025
- Photographs© TOPIA
Space should hold memory without becoming a replica of history. Here, the project looks for a contemporary way to continue the courtyard tradition and to translate the spirit of Pingcheng through light, material, and sequence.
– Joe Cheng
Urban Edge and Courtyard Continuity
Set beside Heyang Gate and within view of Datong’s historic wall, the project occupies a sensitive urban edge where heritage fabric meets new construction. Rather than present itself as a self-contained object, it extends the grain of the old city through a composition of low rooflines, alley-like passages, enclosed courts, and carefully scaled pavilions. The site plan acknowledges that the value of the location lies not only in its adjacency to monuments but also in the continuity of everyday urban patterns that have historically structured movement and enclosure in Pingcheng.
The underlying model is the Shanxi courtyard house, especially the serial logic of layered compounds in which public and private zones unfold through progressive thresholds. Here, that logic is reworked for a hotel program. Narrow transitional routes, over street conditions, framed openings, and small courts replace the generic corridor and lobby sequence found in most hospitality projects. The result is a plan that privileges episodic movement and spatial compression, allowing arrival to occur gradually rather than through a singular reception hall.
A particularly important move is the division between restored historic buildings on the west and new insertions on the east. This creates a compound that is neither fully preserved nor entirely new. The west side maintains the scale, roofscape, and material memory of the older fabric, while the east side interprets those conditions through contemporary construction. The project, therefore, operates as a negotiated field of preservation, reconstruction, and reinterpretation, with the central courtyard functioning as the hinge between these temporal layers.
Recasting Northern Wei References Through Contemporary Form
The project’s cultural references are anchored in Datong’s Northern Wei legacy, but they are generally translated through mass, texture, and atmosphere rather than literal reconstruction. Sources such as stele inscriptions, stone sculpture, and the Yungang Grottoes appear as formal attitudes: cut surfaces, incised edges, compressed openings, and a persistent sense of tectonic weight. This approach avoids the theatrical historicism often associated with culturally themed interiors and instead uses abstraction to connect architecture to regional memory.
Externally, the new volumes remain low and controlled. Stone planes, dark-tiled rooflines, and rust-toned screened elements echo local silhouettes while remaining legible as contemporary interventions. A monolithic canopy and latticed pavilion establish this language at the point of entry. The composition is not based on the mimicry of traditional details but on proportional and material affinities with the surrounding roofs, walls, and eaves. In aerial views, the new work reads as part of the urban roofscape without disappearing into it.
Inside, the references become more tactile. Carved stone fragments, rough quarried walls, grotto-like surfaces, and niche compositions generate a vocabulary of erosion and incision. Some gestures are direct, as in courtyard walls that recall Buddhist cave niches or pool ceilings that allude to mural fragments. Others are more architectural, as in the use of heavy thresholds and stone-lined passages to produce a sense of compression and release. Across these settings, historical memory is carried less by ornament than by the physical character of material surfaces and the way light settles on them.
Spatial Sequence, Ritual, and Interior Atmosphere
The project is organized as a processional sequence that moves from entry to lounge, dining, wellness, and guestrooms through a calibrated series of thresholds. Arrival begins with a turn back toward the city wall, then passes through stone ramps, reflecting water, and a vaulted gateway before opening into interior courts. This choreography establishes movement as a ritual act. Changes in width, ceiling height, and illumination produce a legible rhythm of compression and expansion, allowing the building to be read as a sequence of episodes rather than as a continuous field.
Circulation spaces are treated as architectural rooms in their own right. Corridors lined with low light sources, stairwells topped by narrow skylights, and glazed passages overlooking tiled roofs become moments of pause and orientation. These spaces mediate between the courtyards’ exterior openness and the rooms’ inward character. Their value lies in this intermediate condition. They are not residual connectors but spatial devices that regulate mood, speed, and visual attention.
The interior atmosphere depends on restraint. Muted earth tones, dark stone floors, matte timber, filtered daylight, and sparse object placement produce a calm that is architectural rather than decorative. Seating areas in the lobby remain low in contrast and materially dense, with stone fragments and ceramic vessels positioned less as displays than as anchors of scale and memory. Even where the project uses dramatic references, such as the mural-like ceiling above the pool, it tempers them through low light and controlled acoustics. The emphasis remains on stillness, ritual, and temporal depth rather than spectacle.
Adaptive Reuse, Material Contrast, and the Guestroom as Courtyard Microcosm
The restored western houses are among the clearest parts of the project because they preserve the original structures’ legibility. Timber rafters, pitched roofs, grey brick walls, and courtyard proportions remain visibly distinct from the inserted hospitality program. Contemporary furnishings, bathrooms, and glazing are added with relative restraint, allowing the historic shell to continue to read as a structural and spatial framework rather than as a backdrop disguised by interior finishes. This balance is important in adaptive reuse, where comfort often comes at the cost of architectural clarity.
Within both restored and newly built accommodation, the guestroom is conceived as a compact version of courtyard living. Windows frame seasonal views of trees, walls, and distant watchtowers, while private planted enclosures extend the room into controlled outdoor space. The room sequence often follows a domestic logic of threshold, sitting area, sleeping zone, and bath, echoing the layered organization of northern Shanxi residences at a smaller scale. This gives the guestroom a degree of spatial depth uncommon in standard hotel planning, where occupation is typically flattened into a single neutral enclosure.
Material contrast sharpens the dialogue between old and new. Weathered brick and dark timber coexist with glass partitions, bronze-toned metal, and refined stone surfaces. In the bathrooms, smooth tubs and polished vanities are positioned against rough masonry and planted courts, making the contemporary insertions unmistakable without severing them from the existing fabric. The project’s most effective moments come from this direct juxtaposition. Rather than dissolving the differences between the inherited structure and the new occupation, it uses contrast to articulate time, construction, and use with unusual precision.
About CCD / Cheng Chung Design (HK)
CCD / Cheng Chung Design (HK) was founded by Mr. Joe Cheng and is based in Hong Kong, with design teams in Shenzhen, Los Angeles, Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, and beyond. Founded in 1994, the studio specializes in interior design and consulting services for top international brand hotels and works across the hospitality design value chain, including pre-consulting, architectural design, MEP, lighting, signage and branding, soft furnishings, and art curation. Guided by Joe Cheng’s design philosophy of Eastern artistic conception in Western form, CCD approaches architecture and interiors through a culturally centered, experience-oriented, and detail-driven process.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Landscape designers: Shanshan Landscape
- Client: Huaxia Jianghong Datong Cultural Tourism Development Co., Ltd.
- Other contributors: Architectural design by goa
- Other contributors: Interior furnishings by Signyan Design
- Other contributors: Lighting design by CCD / Cheng Chung Design (HK)
- Research references or publications: Datong Museum Northern Wei sculptures
- Research references or publications: Yungang Grottoes
- Research references or publications: Wei stele inscriptions
- Research references or publications: Multi-ethnic cultural artifacts
