At the foot of the Tianmashan mountain, at the site of a now-abandoned quarry, the InterContinental Shimao Wonderland will stand 18-stories tall—16 of them below ground!
The hotel is being designed by Atkins, an award-winning British firm of architects, who have described their work thusly:
We drew our inspiration from the quarry setting itself, adopting the image of a green hill cascading down the natural rock face as a series of terraced landscaped hanging gardens. In the centre, we have created a transparent glass ‘waterfall’ from a central vertical circulation atrium connecting the quarry base with the ground level. This replicates the natural waterfalls on the existing quarry face.
The 380-room hotel is projected to open later 2014 or early 2015. Which seems incredibly ambitious, though China is the country that built a (arguably less elaborate) hotel in only 15 days, so. [Business Insider]
