Wuhan Ski Resort / CLOU Architects

Architects: CLOU architects
Area: 178000 m²
Year: 2024
Photographs: Arch Exist, Shrimp Studio
Manufacturers: AkzoNobel
Lead Architects: Jan Clostermann
Design Team: Jan Clostermann, Zhi Zhang, Sebastian Loaiza, Zihao Ding, Liang Hao, Yiqiao Zhao, Christopher Biggin, Principia Wardhani, Artur Nitribitt, Jing Shuang Zhao, Liu Liu, Yinuo Zhou, Yuan Yuan Sun, Haiwei Xie
LDI: China Construction Shen Zhen Decoration Co., LTD
Landscape: WATERLILY DESIGN STUDIO
Facade Consultants: China Construction Shen Zhen Decoration Co., LTD
Clients: Wuhan Urban Construction Group
City: Wuhan
Country: China

Wuhan Ski Resort, designed by CLOU Architects in Wuhan’s Huangpi district, is a large-scale entertainment, sports, and retail complex centered around a lake with terraced three-dimensional pixel facades. Featuring a 500-meter indoor ski slope, hotels, theme parks, and retail spaces, it promotes year-round snow activities with ski schools, clubs, and professional events. The design blends indoor winter sports, a retail street, and an outdoor theme park, creating an immersive experience with shopping, watersports, and nightlife. A modular facade system unifies its diverse building typologies, while landscaped plazas and interactive spaces seamlessly connect indoor and outdoor areas. Establishing itself as a landmark, the resort integrates with transportation nodes, redefining snow entertainment in China.

What inspires me most is seeing how people reshape space over time. The second life of a building, once it’s handed over and becomes part of daily life, is where the real testing begins. Some buildings are used exactly as we imagined, others are not, and that’s perfectly fine. The real potential lies in those unexpected gaps. What matters is how architecture works with or against these realities.
Interview with Sebastian Loaiza of CLOU architects

A diverse range of entertainment, sports, and retail facilities is arranged around a central lake, creating a vast commercial complex characterized by architecture and facades in harmonious scales of terraced three-dimensional pixels.

Driven by the influence of the Beijing Winter Olympics, snow sports have gained popularity among China’s younger generations. The newly completed Wuhan Ski Resort integrates sports facilities with hotels, retail spaces, theme parks, and various entertainment amenities, further enhancing the experience with ski schools, ski clubs, and professional sports events, establishing a new type of snow-themed entertainment complex.

Wuhan Ski Resort, a 24-hour leisure complex featuring a 500-meter downhill slope, is situated in the Huangpi district near Mulan Ancient Town and is poised to become a contemporary landmark in the area. It brings together a diverse range of entertainment, sports, and retail facilities around a central lake, forming a vast commercial complex that promotes year-round snow sports. Through a carefully integrated combination of indoor winter sports, a connective retail street, and an outdoor theme park, the resort establishes a new model for all-inclusive entertainment.

Designed as a setting for 24-hour lakeside recreation, the masterplan integrates carnival-like energy, indoor and outdoor shopping districts, watersports, and an abstracted mountain form within a single expansive complex. Architecture and surfaces merge through complementary scales of terraced three-dimensional pixels, creating an immersive experience. A modular facade system unifies all components, incorporating collective elements that are deconstructed and reassembled to establish a distinctive identity through new synergies.

Blending sports with celebration, events, and retail, Wuhan Ski Resort unifies three distinct leisure experiences through an integrated design language that incorporates building typologies of varying scales. Catering to the entertainment demands of one of China’s most populous cities, the resort features a half-kilometer-long, 100-meter-high indoor ski slope, setting a new benchmark for indoor winter sports. The indoor snow facilities are further enhanced by a vast outdoor carnival landscape and a diverse mix of indoor and outdoor retail spaces.

Functioning as an indoor-outdoor urban living space, Wuhan Ski Resort extends beyond its half-kilometer-long, 100-meter-high indoor ski slope with a pixelated multimedia facade. Below, a series of foothills filled with sports and nightlife venues extends toward the waterside, seamlessly connecting plazas and retail streets with lushly landscaped areas and interactive facades. Indoor spaces merge with the outdoors, activating both internal and external retail areas with entertainment facilities and green spaces while establishing direct connections to nearby transportation nodes.