Kawagebo Snow Mountain Hotel
KAWAGEBO SNOW MOUNTAIN HOTEL
Moguang Studio
ARCHITECTS
Moguang Studio
LEAD ARCHITECTS
LI Jiaying, FENG Xin
MEP CONSULTANTS
He Chunhun, Liu Hongfei, Wei Tianliang
CLIENTS
Shanghai Shanhai Youye Hotel Group Co., LTD.
CONSTRUCTION FIRM
Shanghai Ye You Zhu Decoration Engineering Co., LTD.
ENGINEERING
Ma Zhigang
MANUFACTURERS
AtelierSo Studio, Chengdu Qianshu, Ganzi Nire Handwoven Carpets, Mengke, NAZA Furniture Design, New Delhi Secret, Qinghai Gase Industry & Trade, Shanghai Gongyan New Material Technology, Shanghai Juno Industrial Co., Ltd.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Yumeng Zhu, Haiting Sun, Moguang Studio
AREA
2500 m²
YEAR
2025
LOCATION
Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, China
CATEGORY
Hotels
English description provided by the architects.
Located at the Thirteen Towers Viewing Platform in Meili Snow Mountain National Park, Diqing, Yunnan, the project sits adjacent to Wunongding Village in a setting shaped by intensive tourism development.
Although the site faces the Meili Snow Mountain range, it is also defined by a constricted roadside edge, visual clutter, temporary structures, and the fragmented realities of ongoing construction around it.
Rather than attempting to recreate an imagined version of "authentic Tibet," the design responds to these conditions directly. Its aim is not to romanticize the site, but to establish a place of calm within an environment already saturated by spectacle.
The project adopts an integrated architectural and interior design approach. Constrained by the site dimensions and a 15-meter height limit, the scheme raises the ground floor by 1.8 meters to improve privacy, secure clearer mountain views, and reduce the immediate impact of the disorder at street level.
The above-ground volume is organized across four levels, accommodating reception, lobby and public functions, guest rooms, and a top-floor café, while the basement contains the restaurant, kitchen, storage, and service areas.
The building is conceived as a restrained white volume inserted into the mountain landscape. White sandstone with a rough, chiseled texture gives the exterior a quiet material presence, while gray fabric balustrades at the guest-room balconies soften the facade and introduce a measured rhythm to the elevation.
The design does not rely on literal formal references. Instead, it draws from long-term observation of Tibetan temples and vernacular dwellings to rethink the relationship between space, structure, light, and everyday life.
What is translated here is not a decorative image of locality, but a spatial logic: one shaped by timber frameworks, elevated light, layered thresholds, textiles, and movement through space.
In many Tibetan religious and domestic buildings, space is not disclosed all at once; it is experienced gradually through circling, pausing, ascending, and looking back. This bodily process of moving through architecture informed the project's spatial organization.
At the center of the hotel is a vertically developed atrium, which becomes the main spatial core of the project. Overlapping corridors on the second and third floors connect the lobby, guest rooms, and top-floor public areas, transforming circulation into an experiential sequence rather than a purely functional route.
These corridors recall the spatial role of galleries and peripheral passageways in Tibetan architecture, where movement and perception are closely intertwined. Daylight enters from above and is filtered through layers of grilles, beams, and balustrades, producing a shifting pattern of light and shadow across floors and walls.
Materially, the atrium is defined by beige wood-wool acoustic panels, white stone surfaces, exposed timber framing, and carefully proportioned geometric divisions.
Together, these elements create a subtle gradation of tones and textures that produces what might be described as a layered field of white. Here, ornament is not conceived as a separate applied surface, but as something emerging from the constructive logic of the building itself.
The top floor is conceived as a place of encounter between the guest and the mountain landscape. A hybrid steel-and-timber roof spans the space to create an open yet sheltered viewing environment, offering a calm setting in sun, fog, snow, or rain.
At the same time, the project reinterprets several spatial archetypes found in Tibetan dwellings: the "water" at the entrance, the "fire" at the center of the lobby, and the "central pillar" extending through the atrium.
Together, these elements form a gradual sequence from arrival to ascent, guiding the visitor from the everyday interior toward the distant mountain view and a quieter, more contemplative state.
