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The Temple House
the World Of Hospitality
The Temple House
Located in the heart of Chengdu – one of China’s key
centres of finance and commerce – is The Temple
House, a historically-rich hotel that opened in
July 2015. Designed by Make Architects for Swire
Hotels, The Temple House is the third hotel in Swire’s
flourishing House Collective portfolio, following The
Upper House in Hong Kong and The Opposite House
in Beijing.
Key to the design concept was for the hotel’s form and
materiality to convey outstanding design excellence,
with a high degree of comfort and facilities, and a
welcoming, well-embedded “local” quality. Katy
Ghahremani, Make partner and lead architect on the
project, states: “The design was not a linear process.
It was an iterative dialogue with Swire Hotels which
made the process much more interesting. We could
look at the design holistically and this created a really
dynamic relationship between the design of the hotel’s
external and internal spaces.”
The main design trigger was the location of Chengdu
itself – with its rich history, celebrated traditions and
lush landscape. Brian Williams, Managing Director
of Swire Hotels, clarifies: “We want people to come to
Chengdu and have a unique hotel experience, one they
couldn’t have in Hong Kong or Beijing. The hotel is
unique to Chengdu, and unique in Chengdu.”
The hotel embraces a typical Siheyuan or ‘courtyard
house’ design, with a sequence of courtyard gardens
bordered by two L-plan medium rise buildings – one
housing 100 hotel rooms, and the other 42 serviced
apartments. A beautifully-restored Qing Dynasty
heritage building, at the corner of the site, is the anchor
and entrance point for the hotel.
Guests reach the hotel’s core facilities by travelling
through the heritage building’s internal two-storey
high courtyard into a reception area, and enter the
main hotel by passing down a grand staircase to the
landscaped courtyard level. Located here are covered
routes to the lift-cores for the hotel rooms and