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AssetID: 35940217

Headline: Hotel Opens In Disused Quarry

Caption: A jaw-dropping hotel has opened within a 88-metre-deep abandoned quarry near Shanghai. The Shimao Wonderland Intercontinental hotel has 337 rooms, with 16 levels cascading down the rugged quarry cliff face. Only two of the building's levels are above the ground. Described as a 'ground scraper', the two lowest levels are underwater, with one level utilised as guest rooms and public areas such as restaurants and aquarium. The hotel features a spectacular 'glass waterfall' structure to house the vertical circulation core with observation lifts. There is also a large conference/ballroom centre, together with water based leisure facilities and swimming pools on the quarry bottom water level. Externally, there are extensively landscaped visitor facilities, such as a outdoor themed entertainment park and cantilevered glass floor overlook walkway. British architect Martin Jochman was the designer of the winning concept from the International competition held in 2006. He oversaw the scheme design development with ATKINS in the UK and in Shanghai, his design studio JADE + QA, has for the past six years been progressing and completing the work for Shimao, finalising the design, producing construction information and coordinating the landscape, interior and structural/civil engineering design until the completion of the project in November 2018. JADE + QA explain: "The mainly passive sustainable features will take advantage of the orientation, low profile, grass roof and the unique microclimate caused by the thermal properties of the quarry rock mass and the quarry lake; cooling the structure in the summer and heating in the winter. In fact this successful 'Brownfield' site utilisation of a disused industrial quarry site will make this project an important contribution to the principles of sustainability in China. The engineering challenges facing this project had to solve unusual problems of the seismic implications of the 'tall building fixed at both ends' and the associated problems of fire safety, drainage, water quality and circulation associated with its unique location and the fact that the building is an inverted ‘ground scraper’."

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