The Opposite House
The Opposite House, Swire's first hotel and a Kengo Kuma building in Beijing's Sanlitun, closed on 30 June 2024 after sixteen years; this page is kept as a record of a former hotel.
- Neighbourhood
- Sanlitun, Chaoyang
- Opened
- July 2008
- Design
- Kengo Kuma and Associates
The Opposite House was the first hotel of Swire Hotels. From its opening in July 2008 until its closure on 30 June 2024 it stood in Sanlitun, in Beijing's Chaoyang district, as part of the shopping quarter Swire built there, The Village at Sanlitun, now Taikoo Li Sanlitun. Swire Hotels presented it as the first in a series of hotels of its own, with Kengo Kuma as architect and Neri and Hu also credited with the design; the group's later houses now carry a single name, as OKYTO reported when Swire Hotels united its Houses under the Upper House brand.
Kuma's practice designed the whole Village North area along Sanlitun Road, the hotel included, as a courtyard house, in a city where, it wrote, "the only outside space that is left is the bleak space at the foot of high-rise buildings". "Our aim was to translate Siheyuan, a traditional Chinese housing style, into a modern context," Kuma told Habitus. The courtyard became a six-storey atrium, hung with stainless-steel mesh in a curve the practice likened to a parabola and used for changing art exhibitions. Outside, a traditional Chinese geometric pattern was printed across the whole glass façade, whose green Kuma described as an "urban forest".
Guests came in through a pair of restored Qing dynasty timber doors. The 99 rooms were studios of 45 to 115 square metres, with a penthouse of 390, and Kuma's office used wood "as much as possible" inside them, in pale oak floors and freestanding timber bathtubs. Two levels below the atrium was a 22-metre pool clad in stainless steel, lit through a skylight and by hanging fibre-optic lights.
Swire Properties announced the closure in April 2024. The South China Morning Post noted that Swire's hotel business had made a loss every year from 2015 to 2023. A spokesman said it had "been a very difficult decision to close The Opposite House", and that the building would make way for an "innovative retail landmark" within Taikoo Li Sanlitun, a plan that, he said, "represents Swire Properties' long-term commitment to Sanlitun".
Sources: South China Morning Post; Mingtiandi; Kengo Kuma and Associates; Habitus; Asia Travel Tips; Hotel Executive
