Four Seasons Hotel Guangzhou will occupy the top 30 floors of the new 103-story International Finance Center (IFC) Guangzhou. The hotel will include 344 guest rooms, 42 suites, four restaurants, and two bars.
Designed by Wilkinson Eyre architects of London, the IFC Guangzhou—with its positive feng shui—is “woven” together by a unique “diagrid” structure featuring concrete-filled steel tubes that lace around the three-sided vase-shaped structure. The three-sided shape is emulated in features such as the Premier Rooms’ triangular, free-standing bathtubs.
Entering on the ground floor, guests board express elevators to the 70th floor lobby. As guests step into the 30-story light-filled atrium lobby, they are bathed in natural light funneled down from the immense glass ceiling.
The Hotel’s design firm, HBA/Hirsch Bedner Associates, has envisioned a marriage between Chinese culture and modern design with a series of motifs that references dragons and clouds, such as in the custom-designed guestroom carpets that create an illusion of walking on air. Onyx fantastico, a unique red stone that changes color and tone depending on how it is viewed, is used in the elevators to symbolize the fiery breath of the dragon lifting guests through the building.
“The dragon, so often depicted riding atop the clouds in Chinese mythology, is a symbol of wisdom, intelligence, enlightenment, energy, leadership, success and good fortune,” GM Bahram Sepahi said in a statement. “It’s this atmosphere that we are striving to create at Four Seasons Hotel Guangzhou.”
Four restaurants and two bars are present in the hotel: the Tian Bar, cocktails on the 99th floor; Catch, which presents the freshest seafood prepared in the restaurant’s demonstration kitchen; Yu Yue Heen, Cantonese dining; Kumio, a Japanese restaurant, one of the only places where blowfish can be prepared outside of Japan; the Italian-inspired Caffe Mondo; and the Atrium Bar, for light fare, tea, and cocktails.
The Four Seasons will also open a second hotel in Shanghai at Pudong this year, marking the 5th and 6th in the company’s Chinese portfolio.