Along the Li River, at the foot of the mountains, the restaurant occupies a long, narrow site pressed against a rocky cliff. A flood-control canal cuts across it—part natural, part engineered—tracing the contours of the mountain. The restaurant's spatial organization, podium, and roof all extend from the geometry of this canal, abstracting and echoing the mountain's profile. A continuous roof shelters the activity area, indoor dining space, and teahouse, creating a series of shaded, semi-outdoor spaces beneath its generous eaves. Following two tangent lines drawn from the mountain's edge, the building comes to rest at either end, framing a sequence of spatial moments that face the mountain, run alongside it, or open toward the old riverside pier. The podium lies low against the terrain; from it, tapered prismatic columns rise to support a roof that settles lightly upon them.
Conceived as a single sweeping gesture around the existing canal, the roof responds to the mountain at the territorial scale while orchestrating the progression, transition, and culmination of the interior sequence. At a more intimate scale, the podium adapts to the cliff, the watercourse, and the existing vegetation, absorbing site discoveries and programmatic refinements without losing the clarity of its organization. These on-site adjustments became a further layer of the design, reconciling intentions developed on paper with the richness and complexity of the actual landscape. One such discovery—a large boulder uncovered during construction—gave rise to a redesigned entrance, where staggered curved handrails and progressively widening trapezoidal steps lend the staircase a dynamic movement.
Running alongside the mountain and the canal, a long bar forms the experiential heart of the restaurant. Here, the chefs step out from the kitchen into full view, presenting fresh ingredients and refined culinary craft, while behind them the rugged cliff face and untamed landscape remain ever present. The dining experience unfolds horizontally, like a living shanshui (landscape) scroll. The teahouse beneath the trees offers something altogether different: the experience of crossing the canal and entering the mountain itself. The restaurant thus establishes two complementary relationships with the landscape—one of viewing it, the other of inhabiting it.
Board-formed concrete lends the architecture the tactile quality of carved stone, allowing it to merge quietly into the mountainside and, through weathering, to record the passage of time. Fresh, fragile bamboo leaves were pressed into the concrete, leaving a distinctive texture that stays subordinate to the building's spatial and structural expression. Their flattened yet finely articulated impressions grow denser near the base of the columns and more diffuse above, like abstract brushstrokes drifting across the podium and up between the columns. Here, the gentle sway of the bamboo grove and the enduring weight of the mountain converge into a single architectural expression.
Team:
Design Team: Atelier Guo
Clients: Yangshuo Sugar House
Principle architect: Liaohui Guo
Project architects: Ziqian Wang
Project Team: Yuhui Xue, Huan Chen, Min Wu
Site Architects: Yuhui Xue, Huan Chen, Canghai Li, Xuliang Pan, Sishi Peng, Zhuoyuan Li
Construction Drawings: Architectural Design and Research Institute of Zhejiang Province
Lighting Design: UNI-Lighting
Construction: Suzao Architects
Photo credits: Hao Chen, Gion von Albertini
