Langham Hotel Xintiandi Shanghai

Langham Hotels International Limited trading as Langham Hospitality Group is a hotel operator with its headquarters in Hong Kong. The oldest hotel in its portfolio The Langham London originally opened in 1865 as Europe’s first ‘Grand Hotel’. Today the group covers four continents with projects located in cities and resorts around the world including Beijing, Boston, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Jakarta, Bangkok, Phuket, London, Auckland, Boston, Sydney, and Melbourne, Los Angeles, Toronto, and New York. The group’s expansion continues with its two brands ‘The Langham Hotels and Resorts’ and ‘Cordis Hotels and Resorts’ as well as its affiliate hotels.

The Langham was sold to Great Eagle Holdings in 1995. Great Eagle used the ‘Langham’ brand to rebadge a number of hotels in its portfolio thus creating the Langham Hospitality Group. Great Eagle has subsequently purchased further hotels and rebadged them as ‘Langham’ hotels. It has also moved other hotel brands within its portfolio into the Langham Hospitality Group.

But what makes this company stand out? Aside what The Langham hotels and its ‘Sincere Service Innovation Captivation of the Senses and Exceptional Design’ for the Shanghai outlet it would be a fantastic location. It’s situated right in one of the most popular areas in Shanghai called ‘Xintiandi’, where old-style Shikumen residences and modern architecture are harmoniously built next to each other. Shanghai of the 1920s and the modern lifestyle of urbanites of the 21st century at its best. The architecture of the friendly curved building makes use of the view of the old part of Shanghai that is most optimal. The windows of the total of 357 enchanting rooms and suits cut out the views perfectly.

Xintiandi is divided into two parts: the South Block and the North Block. The five-star luxury Langham Hotel project on which Yeh has worked and built is situated in the South Block, mainly consisting of modern architecture while the North Block keeps the old Shikumen architecture style. The typical Shikumen residences of old Shanghai seem to tell people beautiful stories about the history and culture of the city. They originally appeared in the mid of the 19th century as a product of combining Chinese and Western architecture styles usually having a vaulted stone door frame with Chinese style carvings and a wooden door. Passing through the narrow lanes you can see various of them as good settings for photographing.

In 2005 Hsiu-Li Yeh worked and lived in Shanghai for 2 years. In collaboration with Screampoint, drafts and architecture visualizations were made. Back in those years, it was still hard to make photo-realistic images that could be used in marketing material. While designing and building the 3D renders became a powerful tool to fasten the development process and start selling the service way sooner than competitors did. The CEO of Screampoint comes from the Bay area of the USA and had – even years before this challenging project – the vision of digitalization cities from very early on in the process. We have established a more beautiful city physically but perhaps even more valuable we build and gave knowledge to locals. Altogether this brings I believe a much stronger result. It’s fascinating how some fall and some seem to prevail – after so many years for sure this is a winning story – the hotel stands proudly in the Shanghai landscape. It’s an honor to have been part of the project and team!

Architectural Design, Sketch Visualisation, and Project Management.