Mountain Retreat Tea Lodge / Archermit

Architects: Archermit
Area: 693 m²
Year: 2024
Photography: Arch-Exist, HereSpace
Lead Architect: Youcai Pan
Design Director: Zhe Yang (Partner)
Technical Director: Renzhen Chen (Partner)
Design Team: Rui Yang, Qinmei Hu, Yaxian Zhao, Yuanjun Gou, Yuting Huang
Construction Drawing Team: Chengdu Meixia Architectural Design Co., Ltd.
Client: Xuyong Town People’s Government, Xuyong County
Construction Unit: Sichuan Chenghong Construction Investment Co., Ltd.
Location: Hongyan Village, Sichuan Province
Country: China

Mountain Retreat Tea Lodge, a residential hospitality project designed by Archermit in Hongyan Village, Luzhou, redefined rural architecture through a restrained interpretation of Southern Sichuan vernacular forms and direct integration with the surrounding mountain and tea field landscape. Completed in 2024, the project uses local red rock, traditional blue and red tiles, and straw-painted surfaces to root the building in its natural and cultural setting. Organized around three enclosed courtyards, the spatial design emphasizes visual framing, spatial transition, and tactile quietness. With only six guest rooms, the retreat promotes intimacy, clarity, and a sustained engagement with its environment.

Set along the forested edge of Danshan Mountain, the Mountain Retreat Tea Lodge engages its terrain through calibrated massing and topographic sensitivity. The layout incorporates low-slung forms that settle into the landscape, while the lifted rooflines and cantilevered viewing platform introduce contrast and orientation. Passive strategies guide the experience inward, using narrow entries, corridor arms, and courtyard thresholds to heighten spatial awareness. Sound, light, and air shift gently through these transitional layers. Rather than replicating tradition, the architecture distills rural memory into proportion, material, and sensory pacing, offering a spatial quietness aligned with its ecological and poetic context.

The architectural composition applies vernacular features with clear intention. The pitched roof is covered in small blue tiles with areas of red tile, referencing a nearby residence that had been repaired using similar red patches. Local red rock is used for exterior paving. Walls are finished in warm-toned straw paint, and exposed timber trusses support the roof structure. These rooflines form shifting volumes that mimic nearby terrain and fade visually into the cultivated tea fields. The roof form, which resembles two tea leaves opening, reveals a red cantilevered viewing platform emerging from the center. This specific gesture gives the lodge its visual identity. A recurring strategy in Archermit’s rural projects, the lifted roof opens view corridors and creates moments of light and orientation across the plan.

Two corridor arms extend from the entry and rear side of the building, lengthening the horizontal reach and reinforcing the connection to the surrounding landscape. These arms help mediate between the built structure and the edge of the forest. The lodge is structured around three primary exterior rooms: a front courtyard, a fully enclosed central courtyard, and a rear courtyard. Existing vegetation and the site’s terrain define the outer spaces, while the central courtyard is bound entirely by the building and corridors, framing an open sky. Spaces such as the multipurpose hall, reception, guest rooms, kitchen, and tea rooms are arranged around this quadrangle, each responding to specific exterior conditions and framed perspectives.

The entry sequence uses a narrow, low corridor to guide visitors inward, allowing a gradual psychological transition into the retreat. Window openings and view cuts are carefully positioned to reveal mountain scenery that shifts as the movement continues. Environmental sounds, including bamboo movement, bird calls, and insects, permeate the forest edge and filter into the building, deepening the sensory atmosphere. Spatial rhythm is defined by alternating compression and release, where enclosed thresholds give way to open sightlines.

The retreat contains six guest rooms, distributed across three layouts. Each room includes a private hot spring pool and tea-drinking area. Shared public zones include a multipurpose hall, an individual tea room, and a platform facing the mountain and tea fields. These spaces are designed for multiple types of travelers and durations of stay while maintaining a unified spatial character. The interior material palette mirrors the architecture’s restraint. Natural wood, neutral tones, and measured lighting reinforce the project’s quiet spatial identity. Furniture is minimal and proportioned to maintain continuity with the architecture. Floor-to-ceiling openings provide a consistent visual link between inside and outside, allowing light and seasonal variation to define the interior atmosphere.

The architects cite a poetic reference to encapsulate the intent of the work: “Leaning by the south window, I indulge in my pride; content with a modest space, I find ease. Clouds drift aimlessly from the peaks; birds, weary of flying, know to return.” This passage reflects the building’s role as a rural retreat shaped by precision, humility, and spatial clarity. Mountain Retreat Tea Lodge remains grounded in its material and ecological context, providing a space for withdrawal where architecture and nature cohere through deliberate form and quiet continuity.