bam wins landscape design contract for quarry hotel project
Shanghai, China

BAM is pleased to be named the lead landscape designer for Shimao Group's Quarry Hotel project. Over 8 years in the making, this China project occupies one of the world's most unique and challenging building sites. The hotel architecture, now in its early phases of construction, was initially designed by Atkins and is now led by the offshoot studio JADE+QA of Shanghai. The hotel will be operated by Intercontinental Hotel Group.

Comprised largely of andesite, the site was operated as a quarry from about 1950 into the late 1990's. Andesite takes its name from a medium viscosity lava that accumulates as thick flows or dome shapes. As the rock hardens it sometimes appears as extruded segments arranged in fluid patterns. These rock surfaces are not rigid geometries as happens in many types of quarries, instead the walls reveal dynamism of the process by which the earth produced the andesite.

The landscape design of the top of the quarry grounds will include hotel entrance amenities, trails, wetlands, and a green roof covering the entirety of the hotel which will extends two floors above ground. Sixteen floors of hotel space descend the northeast wall of the quarry to the bottom. The quarry bottom landscape will include a full lake ecosystem combined with the hotel swimming and gym facilities and a bar.