Header: Arch-exist Photography
Zhougong Mountain International Conference Center, also known as Floating Boat, is a conference building located in the Nanshuige Hot Spring Hotel in the Zhougong Mountain Tourist Resort in Ya’an, Sichuan. Designed by Big Valley Design, with Shengchao Zhang as lead designer, the project covers over 6 thousand square metres and was later listed among the BLT Built Design Awards 2025 winners in the Cultural category.
A challenging site
The site is located right beside the Zhougong River, with roads and water limiting the available building land and a level difference of about 25 metres running north to south. A bamboo forest surrounds the area, and two waterways cross the site. The brief, meanwhile, called for a conference hall for up to 1,100 people, with a height of roughly seven to eight metres and a 30-metre column-free span.
Rather than setting a full conference centre on the riverbank, Big Valley Design sank most of the volume into the slope. The main hall and other large spaces are buried, while the visible part of the project is reduced to a long, projecting form stretched along the water, which is where the Floating Boat name comes from.
A tour indoors
The main conference hall was planned as a space that could change use when needed. Electric sliding-track partitions allow the meeting area to be split into different room sizes, and kitchen zones are arranged on both sides, so the hall can also work as a banquet space. Beyond the conference facilities, the building also includes exhibition space, dining areas and viewing zones, giving it a broader role within the hotel complex.
Since much of the project is pushed into the ground, the side facing the Zhougong River does most of the work of opening the building outward. A glass curtain wall brings light into the interior and opens the riverside landscape to the main spaces, setting up the clearest connection between the buried parts and the site around them.
The projecting area of the new building is used more openly. Its cantilevered corridor functions as a viewing platform for residents, tourists and hotel visitors, while an internal stepped area allows for public events. A restaurant was originally planned here as a scenic dining space before being revised to serve instead as an independent leisure room for the hotel.
Construction and materials
The materials used include metal, aluminium sheet, titanium, lacquer and glass. On the roof, the architects chose pre-weathered graphite-grey titanium-zinc panels after testing different colours and levels of reflectivity, so the building would fit better with both the hotel and the landscape around it. The panels are laid in a diamond pattern that gives the roof a more textured surface, closer in feel to roof tiles than to a flat sheet of metal.
The structure is split between the buried and projecting parts of the building. The conference centre below ground uses a reinforced concrete and steel frame, while the upper section relies on trusses to carry the roof and the underside of the cantilever. This allows the main hall to span 30 metres without columns, while the part above ground extends about 20 metres outward, just like the clients wanted.
Project Information
Prize: Winner in Architectural Design – Cultural at the BLT Awards
Design Company: Big Valley Architectural Design Co., Ltd.
Lead Designer: Shengchao Zhang
Project Location: Ya’an, Sichuan, China
Project Date: October 2024
