The Joe Lalli Resort Hotel was named after the legendary landscape architect Joseph J. Lalli. Wanting to show great respect to Lalli in what would be his last project, “Joe Lalli” became the official English name of the resort. His legacy to seamlessly connect the built environment to the natural environment in both reverent and revolutionary ways became both the design brief and the challenge for the interiors.
Partnering with architects Jade + QA, Stylus Studio found inspiration not only in the raw materials, textures and colors native to Moganshan but also in the design narrative of its past. Known as the “Shanghai Hamptons”, the area has traditionally been a temperate summer vacation retreat for the city’s population since the 1880s.
The aim was to entice guests back to the region to relax and rejuvenate in style and inspire them by creating an unexpected experience using expected natural materials.
“With respect to Joe Lalli, and his mastery in the creative play of texture, shape and proportion, our design solution was to take conceptual cues from this design ethos, the architecture and the natural environment of Moganshan. With great imagination, we distorted scale and form of natural materials such as bamboo, stone and local flora to meaningfully blur the boundaries between exterior and interior.” —Simon Zeng, Director & Lead Interior Architect
Lobby
A dramatic “bamboo cloud” staircase greets visitors and delivers a heavenly hierarchy to the spaces. The feature pendant, inspired by the bamboo fins of the architecture, intends to connect earth and sky and craft an almost osmotic connection from the exterior to the interior.
Ballroom and Lounge
With the design DNA a mimicry of the surrounding area, the ballroom and lobby lounge both reinterpret the tea flower indigenous to Moganshan.
The tea lounge envelops guests in oversize petals and when you look closer you would spot the thoughtful detail of bamboo pattern craved on each panel that not only give a notable impression as guest arrive, they also double up as screens to give semi-private cubic to tea lovers to savour their tea. In the ballroom, an exaugurated blooming tea flower is design as the lighting element to celebrate all the extraordinary moments with the guests. The white and yellow crystal glass lighting has drawn reference from the tea flower while the carpet pattern has mimicked the scatter of leaves on the forest ground.
In the ballroom, an exaugurated blooming tea flower is design as the lighting element to celebrate all the extraordinary moments with the guests. The white and yellow crystal glass lighting has drawn reference from the tea flower while the carpet pattern has mimicked the scatter of leaves on the forest ground.
Aside from the general lobby, tea lounge, and public spaces, ballroom, multi-function rooms Stylus Studio’s design scope included 42 guest-rooms, and a 120 person Chinese restaurant, featuring four private dining rooms.
Beyond the dramatic and breath-taking beauty of the interiors, 95% of the materials supplied come from within an 800km radius of the site. Local subcontractors with superior skill in crafting these local materials were also employed, bringing financial sustenance to this rural area.
Joe Lalli Resort Hotel’s interiors are successful in respecting the foundations: balancing the origins of the place and its people with future needs. It moves every sense by harmonizing nature and technology, and Asian sensitivities with international aesthetics to deliver a hotel with a strong but highly considerate identity.
Material Used :
1. Feature staircase, ceiling details and flower petal seating – (GRG) meaning glass-fibre-reinforced gypsum. Sourced locally by the main contractor.
2. Feature Light (Lobby and Ballroom Chandlery): inspired by the bamboo fins in the architecture: designed by Stylus Studio, produced by Prestige Lighting
3. Stone: All stone supplied by Belle Stone
