This project is to renovate a 7-story building in the old city center of Guangzhou into a modern guesthouse.

Guangzhou has subtropical climate with long summers and warm winters. Its abundant precipitation makes the city flourish with vegetation all year round. Walking down the streets in Guangzhou, there are fascinating greenery everywhere. People’s lives are not confined to just indoors; public activities extended onto the streets allow everyone to take advantage of the climate and pleasant scenery throughout the city. The urban landscape of Guangzhou is filled with people’s vitality and diverse life styles.

The renovation is situated in a residential are with a strong sense of lively dynamic. Due to the high density of buildings and their close distance between each other, one can see the clothes drying on the neighbor’s balcony through the windows. Therefore, how to make the visitors of the guesthouse not have this kind of visual interruption while enjoying abundant natural light becomes one of the major problems we have to solve.

The project began with bare column and beam structures. The standard floor is divided into a four-room layout. The bedrooms and the wet area are separated into upper and lower floors, and the double story living room introduces a frosted channel glass façade, which acts as insulation while bringing in natural light and avoiding direct sightline to neighboring buildings.

One wall of the first-floor lobby is made with 120mm long strips of sliced galvanized steel deck. Natural light passes through parallelly stacked steel deck and reflects softly diffused light to welcome the guests.