Beach Club at the Sanya EDITION Hotel

A modern beach journey
EDITION, luxury boutique hotel brand affiliated to MARRIOTT, entrusted Various Associates to upgrade the beach club of its first hotel opened in China, known as The Sanya EDITION.

Located at the picturesque Haitang Bay, The Sanya EDITION enjoys a first-class beach and a fascinating sea view. Together with natural coconut groves, it creates a strong vibe unique to Hainan and brings unprecedented leisure experience for the guests. As every EDITION hotel embraces local aesthetic features, they’re distinguished from each other while all sharing an iconic brand identity. The aesthetics of The Sanya EDITION is defined by lush greenery, textured materials in original colors, and soft lighting.

As Various Associates took on the project, the primary consideration was how to create a tasteful, cozy and relaxing venue for socializing while incorporating the inviting natural landscape of Sanya and the aesthetics of EDITION into the design.

Through low-impact design interventions, the new structures blend with the existing landscapes and protected trees on the site, and echo the expansive, azure Haitang Bay across the coconut groves. The beach club “grows” from a site enclosed by the existing plants, which are the soul of the new space.

Activated venue
The hotel sought creative design strategies, with the hope to refresh and activate the serene, slightly deserted outdoor beach area whilst introducing young, fashionable lifestyle and socializing activities, so as to turn it into a landmark in Haitang Bay and even in the wider city.

The renewed beach club provides a strong connection among different activity areas in the surroundings, and forms a rendezvous brimming with vigor and joy. Bar goers, guests taking a sunbath, swimmers and volleyball players are not visually blocked from each other. The open space allows the users to throw themselves into a passionate vibe without taking away the sense of boundary that keeps them comfortable.

Upbeat DJs bring a musical feast from early afternoon, which infuses vitality into the area from day to night along with diversified beach activities.

Overlapping “tree” canopies
The continuous bamboo-woven structures consist of five overlapping tree-like canopies with different heights and forms. Their organic and natural curved profiles merge beautifully into the lush nature.

The natural coconut groves and the new structures are scattered around sunken booths. The new structures are connected to the ground through their “trunks” that naturally blend with the preserved plants. The expansive and naturally curvy “tree” canopies bring sufficient protection to the club’s guests, while the space between each canopy unintentionally brings surrounding greenery into the view.

Every “tree” canopy features a curvy form. The clustering canopy structures form beautiful and continuous lines that generate a well-arranged spatial rhythm that blends into nature. To ensure a pure visual effect, every structure is presented as an independent work of bamboo weaving, which took days of on-site work by multiple experienced craftsmen.

The structures are designed at lowered heights where the guests can use the canopies as a perfect background for photo taking. A main bar counter is set up at the center of the site in the shape of a giant trunk, generating a circulation around the bar so that the bartenders can better capture the needs of guests.

Design: Various Associates
Design Team: Qianyi Lin, Dongzi Yang, Jianpeng Liu, Zhichao Lin, Yue Zhang, Shiqi Li
Photography: SFAP