Architects: SpActrum
Area: 705 m²
Year: 2026
Photography: Su Shengliang, SpActrum
Lead Architects: Yan Pan
Architects Team: Yijie Zhang, Ning Guo, Yue Zhang, Jinyu Wan, Zhen Li, Yimeng Tang
Preliminary Design: Shanghai Zhongsen Architecture & Engineering Design Consultants Co., Ltd.
Construction Drawing Design: China United Engineering Corporation Limited
Landscape Design: Zhejiang Andao Design
Landscape Design Team: Ting Mao, Sihan Liu
Interior Design: Hangzhou Pan Tianshou Environmental Art Design Co., Ltd.
Contractor: Zhejiang Third Construction Group Co., Ltd.
Client: Tonglu Tourism Investment, Kaiyuan Cultural Tourism
Video Shooting & Production: SpActrum
City: Hangzhou
Country: China

Houses of Stealth, designed by SpActrum for the Tonglu Senbo Resort in Hangzhou, reinterprets forest hospitality through a strategy of minimal ecological intervention and perceptual ambiguity. Replacing a series of aging resort cabins originally built in the 1990s, the project preserves the site’s mature woodland while introducing elevated walkways and faceted black cabins carefully embedded within the landscape. The architects retained the original building positions to minimize disturbance to the terrain and surrounding vegetation, allowing the forest floor ecosystem to remain largely uninterrupted. Defined by pentagonal geometries with strategically cut surfaces, the cabins shift visually depending on the viewer’s perspective, appearing partially concealed among the trees. The project rejects stylistic nostalgia in favor of a non-referential architectural language derived directly from site conditions, movement, and spatial perception. Through calibrated openings, elevated circulation, and restrained construction methods, Houses of Stealth establishes an immersive retreat where architecture and nature coexist through subtlety rather than visual dominance.

Houses of stealth (tonglu senbo resort) / spactrum

Rather than treating the redevelopment of the Tonglu resort as an opportunity for visual reinvention, SpActrum approached the project as an exercise in preservation and coexistence. During the site analysis, the architects identified the mature forest that had developed around the original structures over the past two decades as the site’s most valuable condition. This recognition led to a strategy focused less on architectural expression and more on maintaining ecological continuity. By preserving the original cabin locations and limiting ground disturbance, the project allows the landscape itself to remain the defining spatial element of the retreat.

The intervention is organized through a lightweight elevated walkway system that threads between the trees while remaining detached from the forest floor. Designed with steel and timber construction, the walkways separate human circulation from the ground ecosystem, allowing moss, grasses, and native vegetation to continue uninterrupted beneath them. Their lowered height reduces the sense of elevation while maintaining clear access to the cabin entrances. Service functions are concealed beneath the elevated volumes, creating a layered arrangement in which architecture and landscape coexist independently while remaining visually interconnected.

The new cabins replace the former Thai-style timber lodges with a sharply faceted architectural language derived from pentagonal geometry. Through selective cuts toward the ground and sky, the architects transformed the simple prism into a complex volume that oscillates between stability and movement. The resulting forms resist singular interpretation, appearing different from every viewing angle along the pathways. Finished in black, the cabins recede into the surrounding woodland while simultaneously intensifying the contrast between geometric surfaces and the irregular textures of the forest.

Openings within the cabins are positioned according to spatial experience, privacy, and landscape framing rather than compositional symmetry. Vertical glazing accentuates double-height interior spaces, while elongated horizontal windows frame panoramic views of the surrounding forest. Bedroom windows separate ventilation elements from primary views, preserving visual clarity while integrating environmental performance into the facade system. In bathrooms, carefully positioned openings permit outward views while restricting visibility from outside. Each cabin includes two entrances: a recessed primary entry articulated by a structural frame and a secondary opening leading directly onto a private terrace where interior and exterior spaces can merge during suitable weather conditions.

Movement through the resort becomes a carefully choreographed perceptual experience shaped by the relationship between walkways, cabins, and vegetation. As visitors progress through the elevated circulation paths, the black volumes emerge gradually between branches and shadows, revealing fragmented geometric profiles that shift continuously with perspective. Some views expose sharply sloped triangular surfaces, while others present orthogonal planes or folded intersections. The architecture avoids static legibility, instead encouraging sequential discovery through motion. Immersed in the dense woodland, the cabins appear less as isolated objects and more as transient figures embedded in the rhythms, textures, and shifting light of the native forest.