Lost Villa · Huanglong Island Lighthouse Hotel by WJ STUDIO

Approximately five years ago, WJ STUDIO embarked on a tourism development project in Shengsi County, a remote archipelago in the northeastern Zhoushan Islands. The journey to the islands remains an expedition: 2.5 hours by ferry from Zhoushan Main Island, 3 hours by combined land and sea travel from Shanghai, 4.5 hours via road and ferry from Hangzhou, and 4 hours from Ningbo. While helicopter and seaplane access has recently been introduced, the islands’ geographical seclusion challenges the efficiency-driven expectations of modern travelers, inherently limiting mainstream tourism.

Huanglong Island, the core development site, has been designated as a national-level island scenic zone, integrating marine culture with island folk traditions. The island focuses on ecotourism, leisure retreats, and scientific education. The design team’s initial site exploration revealed a landscape of striking natural beauty but also highlighted significant challenges: the depopulation of rural communities. Many young residents have left, leaving behind primarily elderly fishermen and a closed school system. The demographic shifts reflect broader national trends of rapid urbanization and rural aging.

Concept: The Three Dimensions of Time

The guiding principle of the design centers on time, articulated in three dimensions:

• Natural Time: The island’s topography and coastal formations have evolved over millennia, providing a unique natural framework that informs the architectural layout and spatial organization.

• Historical Time: The cultural landscape of Huanglong Island—primitive residential settlements, fishing traditions, and farming practices—reflects centuries of human habitation. These cultural layers served as both inspiration and a design entry point.

• Human Time: By designing for the human scale and creating spatial experiences tailored to visitors, the architecture facilitates meaningful engagement with the island, offering opportunities to attract new residents and visitors, while reinterpreting the fishing village for contemporary mobility and tourism.

These temporal layers informed both spatial composition and material strategy, creating an architecture that respects the past while providing a framework for the present and future.

Spatial Strategy and Form

The hotel’s spatial strategy responds to both the topographical elevation differences and the scale of existing village structures, which typically range from 60 to 180 square meters and are built with yellow brick and stone. The main building is anchored between three protected reefs, integrating the complex into the natural and cultural fabric of the island.

Block A, the hotel’s core, is organized around a vast open rock hall. The weathered reef stones are preserved, allowing visitors to experience the tactile qualities of the island’s natural formations. Sunlight filters through skylights to illuminate the rugged surfaces, creating a dynamic interplay of light and shadow that underscores the temporal dimension of the landscape.

Block B, composed of guest room units, draws inspiration from the spatial organization of traditional island villages. The volumes are oriented to respond to sunrise angles in winter and summer, framing landscape views, maximizing daylight, and allowing sea breezes to circulate freely. The design intentionally blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior, creating an immersive experience where the passage of time is felt in the changing light, sound, and movement of the natural environment.

Experience and Design Language

The architectural language of Lost Villa emphasizes sensory rhythm and spatial transformation, using a sequence of hidden, peekaboo, indoor-outdoor, and outdoor-indoor transitions to mimic the experience of traversing the island. Circulation paths descend naturally along mountain ridges, allowing visitors to encounter unexpected vistas and intimate spaces, reinforcing a sense of exploration and discovery.

The project’s materiality reinforces a dialogue between past and present. Foundations are isolated to suspend solid spaces above reefs, reducing visual mass and highlighting the rugged terrain. Stone, wood, and locally sourced materials are used to respect traditional building practices, while contemporary construction methods ensure safety and functionality. The result is an architecture that is empathetic, experiential, and sustainable, transforming depopulation into an opportunity for ecological tourism and rural revitalization.

Community and Ecological Impact

Lost Villa · Huanglong Island Lighthouse Hotel is more than a hotel; it is a cultural intervention. The project reinterprets local heritage and daily life through design, creating a new narrative for island tourism. Visitors engage deeply with both natural and cultural landscapes, experiencing the rhythms of island life while being immersed in a carefully orchestrated architectural journey.

By protecting and highlighting the island’s reefs, maintaining traditional forms, and integrating new architecture sensitively, the project promotes sustainable tourism, cultural preservation, and ecological stewardship. It demonstrates how architecture can act as a mediator between nature, culture, and human experience, offering a model for thoughtful island development in the face of depopulation and environmental change.

Photography: FangFang Tian