Alila Yangshuo Opens in a 1960s Sugar Mill on the Li River
Vector Architects turned a disused sugar mill among Guangxi's karst peaks into a 117-room resort, keeping the old brick buildings and the loading truss over the river.
Alila Yangshuo opened in July 2017 on the bank of the Li River in Guangxi, in a sugar mill built in the 1960s and left disused for more than a decade. It was Alila’s second resort in China, after Alila Anji, and it quickly became one of the most discussed hotel conversions in the country.
The architect was Dong Gong of Beijing practice Vector Architects, with interiors by Ju Bin of Horizontal Space Design. Their approach was to keep the mill at the centre and build quietly around it. The old brick buildings now hold the shared spaces: the reception, a café, a library, a gallery and a multipurpose hall. Sugar House, the main restaurant, occupies the former pressing room, and the bar, named 1969, is in the old refining room. The 117 rooms, suites and villas sit in new buildings on either side, whose simple gabled outlines were kept deliberately plain so as not to compete with the industrial originals.
The most photographed element is the loading truss, a frame once used to lower sugar cane onto river boats. It has been kept, and the swimming pool now runs beneath it, pointing towards the water. Three cave-like openings cut into the accommodation wing frame the karst peaks behind, a reference to the caves found in the surrounding hills.
Design work began in 2013 and construction ran from late 2014 to mid-2017, across about 16,000 square metres of building.
For travellers, the hotel changed the proposition of Yangshuo, a county known since the 1980s as a backpacker base for the Li River and its limestone scenery. It offered a reason to stay several nights rather than pass through, and a base for the walking and cycling described in OKYTO’s guide to slowing down among Yangshuo’s karst villages.
