Habitat : A Container Hotel That Refuses to Act Like One

Genco Berk

Oct 8

5 min read

Most boutique hotels in Moganshan, China follow a familiar formula: old farmhouse, white walls, wooden beams, maybe a fireplace. The Habitat (溪地) does none of that. It is a shipping-container resort tucked into bamboo forest, and how it got there is a stranger story than its silhouette suggests.

Container villas with glass walls and wooden louvers on a stone embankment, seen through a dense stand of bamboo. — The Habitat seen through the bamboo, with the villas set along the stone embankment.

From Rabbit Farm to Container Cluster

The site has a layered history. Before the containers arrived, this patch of land in Fatou Village was a bamboo shoot processing factory, then a rabbit farm—12 mu of factory grounds plus 9 mu of forest, roughly 20 mu in total. When the Cuiyu Group acquired the lease, the annual rent jumped from 30,000 yuan to 150,000 yuan, a quiet measure of how far Moganshan's tourism economy had shifted. Using containers may have seemed radical, but it was a deliberate choice. They allowed the forested site to be disturbed as little as possible, and the structures could be disassembled and rebuilt elsewhere.

Container villas with wooden slats and rammed-earth walls set among trees, with mountains in the background. — The guest villas at The Habitat, with the bamboo forest and hills beyond.

Hard Steel, Rammed Earth

Architect Genco Berk led the project, and the design works through contrast. The exterior facades pair corrugated container steel with wooden slats, bringing a natural material into the otherwise industrial language of the containers. The timber also has a practical role: the slatted screens and overhead louvers provide active sun control, allowing the façades and outdoor spaces to be adjusted to the strong summer sun. Together with the locally sourced rammed-earth walls, the wood helps connect the containers to the surrounding bamboo landscape. The brown of the steel, timber and earth tones keeps the buildings visually close to their setting.

Container building with corrugated brown steel, vertical wooden slats and adjustable overhead sun-control louvers, set against a bamboo-covered hillside. — **Villa B1 type** — Wooden slats as sun-control louvers soften the corrugated steel, while rammed-earth walls ground the containers in the landscape and connect them to the surrounding bamboo.

Container living needed some help to feel comfortable, so the interiors were fitted with soundproof and heat-insulating layers to counter the material's reputation for temperature swings and noise. Inside, the style runs toward Japanese minimalism: furniture stripped down, soft decorations removed, floor-to-ceiling windows framing the bamboo and the stream outside. The guiding philosophy is "断舍离"—decluttering, keeping only what is necessary.

Joining the Containers

The site combines a cluster of guest villas with a three-story public building: reception and a café on the ground floor with a large window facing the stream, a specialty fish restaurant on the second floor, and an open rooftop terrace above. The restaurant is a nod to the local reservoir's freshwater catch, with a chef brought in from Shanghai specifically for fish banquets. Outdoors there is a bar, and the property has laid out its own hiking, wading, rock climbing, camping, fishing, and cycling routes to pull guests into the surrounding bamboo paths.

Four-panel photo showing a yellow crane lifting gray shipping containers into place on a dirt site, with workers guiding and positioning them. — Containers being lowered into position during construction at The Habitat.

Coffee by the Stream, Dinner Above the Bamboo

The café doubles as a breakfast room and a place to linger over coffee with the stream in view, while the second-floor restaurant serves local dishes alongside the reservoir's freshwater catch. The rooftop terrace and outdoor bar round things out—small plates, drinks, and the bamboo canopy at sunset.

From Breakfast to Sunset: The Habitat's Café, Restaurant, and Bar

View from the restaurant looking over a grassy lawn beside a stream, with white parasols, outdoor tables and chairs, and bamboo-covered hills beyond. — The view from the restaurant, looking out over the lawn and the stream.

Four Ways to Stay

The guest accommodation is organized into four distinct building types.

The first type (A 2) is the smallest and most private, designed primarily for couples and honeymooners. Two containers are joined to create a single room, with the bathtub placed openly in the bedroom beside a small internal atrium, while the shower opens onto a private garden screened from the entrance area by high rammed-earth walls. The entrance area has shallow reflection pools, adding a reference to Asian spatial aesthetics.

Freestanding bathtub beside a bed, with floor-to-ceiling glass doors opening onto a deck and a view of a bamboo-covered hillside. — An A2 villa, with the bathtub set openly beside the bed and the bamboo forest beyond.

Floor plan of a Type A villa showing a bedroom with an atrium, a shower and garden, an entrance with reflection pools, a balcony, and rammed-earth walls, with the river beyond. — Floor plan of a Type A 2 villa, with the balcony facing the river.

Behind the bed, the headboard wall opens onto the atrium, bringing planting into the middle of the room. Some of these units sit directly along the river, with their terraces extending over the water.

The second type (A 1) assembles two 40-foot and two 20-foot containers around a central atrium. The atrium is split in two: part of it serves as the bathroom's private garden, and the rest opens onto the living room. The atrium is flanked by two separate 40-foot rooms, which can be rented individually or together.

Floor plan of a Type A 1 villa at The Habitat, Moganshan, showing two 40-foot and two 20-foot containers arranged around a central atrium, with living room, bedroom, bathroom, private garden, rammed-earth wall, and a balcony facing the river. — **The A 1** layout: four containers, one shared atrium/ garden, balcony over the river.

The third type (B 1) is a stacked building for larger groups: four 20-foot containers joined side by side form the bedrooms—one room each—and two 40-foot containers sit on top of them, holding a spacious open kitchen and a living/dining room. Guests enter at this upper level, which gives the living room its view over the bamboo forest and the river; stairs lead down to the bedrooms below.

Floor plan of the living level of a Type B 1 villa at The Habitat, Moganshan: four 40-foot containers on top of the bedrooms holding a spacious open kitchen and a living/dining room, with the entrance at this upper level, a terrace with outdoor furniture, a bathroom, and a staircase leading down to the bedrooms below. — Upstairs, the shared heart of the **B 1**: kitchen and living/dining room across four containers, with the bamboo forest beyond the terrace.

Floor plan of the bedroom level of a Type B 1 villa at The Habitat, Moganshan: four 20-foot containers joined side by side, each holding a bedroom for two with en-suite bathroom, arranged symmetrically around a central staircase leading down from the living level above, on a rammed-earth base. — The bedroom floor of the **B 1**: four identical 20-foot containers, one room each, stairs arriving at the centre.

A lit walkway at night with a rammed-earth wall on the left and bamboo behind a bamboo fence on the right. — The walkway entrance of an B1 villa at The Habitat.

Interior of a Type B 1 villa with tall bamboo in planters in the foreground and the living room in the back, wood flooring throughout. — The entrance area of a Type B 1 villa, with the living room in the back.

Interior of an upper-level villa with stairs on the left leading down, an open kitchen on the right with concrete counters, and wood flooring throughout. — The upper level of a Type B 1 villa, with stairs on the left leading down to the bedrooms and the open kitchen on the right.

Open living and dining space with a set dining table, kitchen counter behind it, and a sofa area at the back. — The dining and living area of a B1 villa.

The fourth type (B 2) is located further up the hill and was designed as a more economical accommodation option. It contains six guest rooms together with a shared living room, with a simpler layout and fewer of the private outdoor spaces found in the other types. Its position higher on the hillside gives it a different relationship to the landscape from the units closer to the river.

A row of container villas with dark corrugated steel walls and glass doors along a paved path, with hills in the background. — A row of B2 villas along the path, with the hills beyond.

A Different Kind of

The Habitat opened after the G20 summit as a "new work" from Emerald Hills, the boutique brand already known in Moganshan for its design-forward properties. It is said to be the area's only container hotel, and that distinction is the whole idea. In a landscape of renovated farmhouses and glass-and-steel villas, the containers sit in the forest in muted browns and earth tones, borrowing from the scenery rather than competing with it.

Container villas designed by Genco Berk, with floor to ceiling windows and wooden slats built on a stone embankment above a river, framed by bamboo leaves, with forested hills behind. — The Habitat by Genco Berk seen from across the river, with the villas set above the stone embankment.

I saw the tensions as part of what made the project interesting: industrial containers in a pastoral setting, hard corrugated surfaces against soft bamboo, a history of rabbit farming and bamboo processing beneath a boutique hotel brand. Rather than trying to hide these contrasts, I used them as part of the character of the place. The result is a hotel that feels both temporary and rooted, industrial and local — and, for me, that combination is what sets it apart.