Project Name: Houses of Stealth  

Location: Tonglu, Hangzhou, China

Architecture Practice: SpActrum

Site Area: 5,740 m²

Building Area: 705 m²

Completion: January 2026

Photography: Shengliang Su

Design Features: Completed in January 2026 within a forested site in Hangzhou's Tonglu district, the Houses of Stealth resort is the work of SpActrum lead architect Yan Pan, commissioned by Tonglu Tourism Investment and Kaiyuan Cultural Tourism. Across a building area of 705 square metres set within a 5,740-square-metre site, the project is a masterclass in restraint. Rather than imposing a dramatic overhaul on a landscape that had accumulated twenty years of organic growth, the architects made the radical choice to disappear into the forest, letting the trees take the lead.

The project replaces a series of dated Thai-style lodges with black cabins of an altogether more enigmatic character. Each unit is derived from a pentagon, its corners cut at opposing angles to produce a Gomboec-inspired geometry that oscillates between stability and motion. No two orientations are the same. Walking the lightweight steel-and-timber elevated walkways that thread through the forest, the cabins seem to materialise suddenly between the branches, each one a different expression of the same essential form.

The blackened exteriors serve a precise ecological logic. The cabins recede behind tree trunks and shadow, their forms softened by dappled light, ensuring the forest reads as the dominant presence. Windows are carved with equal care: narrow vertical slits address the double-height void within, while horizontal bands frame the woodland floor as a living scroll. A protruding element at the bathroom window maintains privacy without sacrificing the view.

Below the elevated walkways, service infrastructure is tucked out of sight, leaving the forest floor continuous and undisturbed. Falcons were observed nesting during construction, a testament to how lightly the ecosystem was touched. In a landscape where resort development so often defaults to spectacle, SpActrum has produced something far more compelling: a collection of spaces that sharpens the senses precisely because it asks so little attention for itself.

Design Team: Founded in London in 2012 by architects Yan Pan and Zhen Li, SpActrum is an independent practice operating across architecture, interior, and urban design with offices in Beijing, established in 2016, and Shanghai, opened in 2021. Both principals are graduates of the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, and bring extensive experience from leading international design firms to their collaborative practice.

SpActrum's work is grounded in a pursuit of what the firm terms "profound authenticity," a methodology that approaches each project without precedent, seeking interventions of penetrating clarity within conditions of social ambiguity and complexity. The practice translates direct perceptual experience into architecturally resolved spatial entities with genuine spiritual dimension. In recent years, the firm has concentrated its research and built work across high-end hospitality, public architecture, and urban regeneration, areas where the pace of transformation in contemporary Chinese society is most acute.

The studio's output has been recognised at the highest levels of international design, receiving the AIA Shanghai Beijing Design Awards Honor Award, the IDA Interior Design of the Year Grand Prize, The Asia Design Prize Grand Prize, and the A' Design Award Gold Prize, among others. The firm's projects have appeared on the covers of Domus China and New International Architecture.