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The Vascos restaurant draws inspiration from the Chinese region of macau
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Accent lighting draws attention to the artwork in the hotel, and individual pieces such as the chandelier in the hotel’s Chynna restaurant create a real sense of grandeur.
As a hotel catering to both business and leisure guests, a range of meeting rooms were also included in the floor plan. These rooms feature floor to ceiling windows, increasing the amount of natural light entering the space, in addition to providing occupants with a host of inspiring views across Beijing.
With the owners giving the team full latitude to select materials, Wilson Associates elected to maximise the use of Cathayan materials. “Our focus was to use materials found in China, to highlight the vast resources of the country,” says Kwan.

This was particularly apparent in the Chynna restaurant. “[We wanted to] reinforce the ‘made in China’ idea of this Chinese restaurant concept,” he says.
This was achieved by using a range of materials from across the country, such as Chinese black lacquer for the millwork, and marble sourced from the Fujian province on China’s south-east coast.

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CHINESE CHALLENGES
The central challenge facing the design team was the structure of the building. As mentioned, the building which now houses the Hilton Wangfujing was originally constructed to act as an apartment block, offices and a mall, creating an internal shape that deviated somewhat from a traditional hotel interior.

Converting this former mixed-use building into a 255-room hotel – which also required a 257m² penthouse suite and four restaurants – required careful planning in the designing of rooms, since the original internal structure was not conducive to a hotel experience.

“This created very unusual column and bay sizes that were deep and fairly narrow, with shafts not in the best position for a hotel,” explains Kwan.

The team overcame this challenge with some skilful readaptation. “We solved this by ‘exploding’ the areas in pre-synched units. For example, the bathrooms were exploded and planned into different
components for different zones.

 “A linear strategy was also used, with the space leading from one area to another, like a gallery. So, spaces are presented along an axis, room by room, rather than connected via a corridor.” This transformed the unusually shaped interior into desirable hotel accommodation.

A further challenge was created by the timescale given for the project. The hotel owners wanted to ensure that the property would be ready for guests in time to capitalise on the key business opportunity presented by the Beijing Olympics.