Header: Chao Zhang
Domain Architects has completed the first phase of Hermit Resort, a 50-room resort in Xingtai, in China’s Hebei province. The studio’s founder, Xu Xiaomeng, was the lead designer and worked with Hannah Wang. Finished in 2025 on a site of 1,300 square metres, it won the “Architectural Design Resort – Midscale & Lifestyle” category at the LIV Hospitality Design Awards 2025.
A new ruin
The designers first looked at the Xing Kiln Ruins nearby, the remains of pottery kilns that have survived for more than 1,500 years. Time has worn away most of their detail, but their layout is still easy to make out: several kiln chambers organised in a horseshoe shape around a small open yard, close enough for one craftsman to tend them all at once. The resort’s own plot was home to a second set of ruins, the broken walls of a village that had been moved elsewhere.
Xu decided to build a third ruin to both complement and celebrate the first two. The studio went for the weathered, unfinished look of an excavated site and the “wow” reaction that old ruins create. In a ruin, the individual walls and beams end up crumbling into irregular shapes, a detail that Hermit Resort attempted to repeat.
A settlement of small buildings
Hermit Resort is built as a cluster of small, single-storey buildings with pale walls. These walls, beams, courtyards and alleys in concrete, stone and glass run into one another, much like the layout seen across the worn kiln site, so a walk through the resort turns up small surprises at each corner. The result is a village that looks far older than it is.
Rooms wrapped around a courtyard
Each of the 50 guest rooms has its own private courtyard, curving around it like a horseshoe, the same shape seen in the old kiln chambers. Put simply, the walls wrap the open space on three sides. When inside, guests end up getting the feeling of being in one of the kilns.
Project information
Architecture Company: Domain Architects
Lead Designers: Xu Xiaomeng, Hannah Wang
Design Team: Xu Xiaomeng, Hannah Wang, Yang Jie
Photography: Chao Zhang
Location: Xingtai, Hebei, China
Date: 2025
