The Desert Lotus Hotel in Xiangshawan is in the Kubuqi Desert, a small section of the Gobi Desert about 350 miles west of Beijing, China. Visitors sliding down 110-meter-high, 45-degree sand hills, cause the "singing sands" to produce a roaring or booming sound, a natural phenomenon still not fully understood. The hotel is part of a larger tourist resort built in the desert in recent years.
Due to the restriction by its special geographic condition, PLaT Architects invented a new structural system that fix in fluid sands using only steel panels without the help of concrete or water. The panels and the supporting skeleton structures are pre-fabricated, and make the base of the building a large container for sands. Thus, the steel panel structure can function as a boat floating on desert that carries the building. The sands in and out of the structure exert same forces to each other, and thus it is flexibly stabilized.
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