Hütte 7: Industrial Chic Interior

How a Three-Storey Village House Was converted into a boutique hotel

Hütte 7

Hütte 7 was the second building Genco Berk designed for Emerald Hills in Moganshan, China. Like Hütte 5, the name Hütte — German for "hut" or "cabin" — was chosen to give the buildings a more Western character. Architecturally, the two projects could hardly have been more different.

The building was typical of the village, but its position on the slope made it feel taller than it was. From below, the eye followed the vertical lines of the façade, making it appear more imposing than we wanted. We could not change the height — and the pitched roof had already become a full-height floor, only adding to the tallness.

The question was how to make the three storeys sit more comfortably on the site — anchored to the slope rather than rising out of it as a single block. So we set out to change the building's visual proportions, not its dimensions.

Before drawing anything, we simply looked: from the road below, the neighbouring houses, the slope above. The eye was following the vertical lines — columns, railing posts, stacked balconies — all reinforcing the height. Take those away, and nothing would guide the eye up.

The answer came from the ground itself: the dark stone of the pavement, pulled upward onto the lower façade, anchoring the house to the slope and drawing a sharp horizontal the original never had.

Before and after: the decorative façade stripped back, the volume reproportioned with horizontals and stone.

Stripping the façade

The first step was subtractive. Off came the decorative balconies and the ornamental façade treatments — everything that divided the building vertically and loaded the upper floors with visual weight. The columns stayed. What remained was the original three-storey volume. What we gave it was a simpler composition: clean white surfaces, large dark-framed openings, timber cladding around selected windows, stone.

Pulling the ground up

One move mattered more than the rest. Normally the paving stops at the wall. Here we pulled the dark stone of the pavement upward and ran it vertically onto the lower façade, so the paving becomes part of the building.

Where to stop the stone took real discussion. Too low and it reads as a plinth. Too high and it swallows the ground floor, starts its own vertical band, and reintroduces the problem we were trying to solve. We settled on a height that keeps the entrance level inside the stone zone and leaves roughly two-thirds of the elevation white.

The stone now looks like it grows out of the terrain and climbs into the elevation, anchoring the house to the ground. It also draws a sharp horizontal across the façade — a division the original building, with its continuous vertical decoration, never had. Below the line the dark stone gives the base weight; above it the white volume reads lighter than it is.

A quieter façade, a shorter list of materials

The rest of the façade reinforces the same idea. Dark-framed openings bring broad horizontals into the white surfaces. Timber around the windows adds warmth and breaks down the scale. The palette — white render, dark metal, timber, local stone — stayed deliberately short, partly for visual calm, partly because a rural site far from specialised suppliers rewards a narrow range: easier to build well, easier to maintain.

None of this was minimalism for its own sake, but a deliberate rebalancing of the façade's geometry. A three-storey building cannot be made to read as a single-storey hut, and we did not try. What the renovation achieved was a shift in emphasis: the horizontals now compete with the verticals, and the base holds the eye before it travels upward.

Inside: eclectic industrial chic

On the first floor, we designed a kitchen and a small restaurant. The entrance, framed by rusted steel bars, gives you a first impression of what follows inside: exposed brick, white plaster, reclaimed old-wood floors and polished concrete.

Inside, the aesthetic is eclectic industrial chic: exposed brick against white plaster, reclaimed old-wood floors, polished concrete, and an orange-painted wooden ceiling that lifts the rawness of the materials without softening it. The furniture follows the same logic — round wooden tables, an unapologetic mix of chairs, black floor lamps and wall sconces.

First impression, industrial edition: rusted steel bars and exposed brick mark the entrance to Hütte 7's restaurant.

Brick walls, an orange ceiling and reclaimed wood floors — the eclectic industrial heart of Hütte 7.

Folkloric tiles, an orange ceiling, and a black wall: the kitchen keeps the eclectic language but adds a local accent and an industrial exhaust.

Retro aviation vibes in the Moganshan mountains: gold aviator furniture in the Hütte 7 lounge.

Upstairs, the guest rooms are quieter — white linens, light wood, upholstered chairs — with glass doors opening onto timber balconies that look straight out over the green of Moganshan.

White linens, a geometric feature wall and reclaimed wood underfoot — the room opens straight onto the green of Moganshan.

The contrast between the restaurant and the guest rooms was intentional. The restaurant could carry more visual energy and material variation, while the rooms needed to feel calmer and more private. What connects them is the continued use of natural materials and the views of the landscape.

Transformation, not restoration

Like Hütte 5, this was not a conventional restoration. The original building gave us the structural framework, but its architectural identity was deliberately and substantially changed: the decorative façade removed, new openings and materials introduced, the relationship to the terrain reconsidered.

What survived was the basic village-house volume and its place within the landscape. Almost everything else was open to reinterpretation.

Deck at Hütte 7, Moganshan, overlooking bamboo hills.

This is one of the more interesting possibilities of adaptive reuse in rural China. An existing building does not have to stay visually unchanged to keep its connection to a place. The connection lives in the volume and the way the building sits within its surroundings — things that survive even when almost every surface is replaced. Sometimes the more productive approach is to keep the structure and the setting, and completely reconsider how the building is seen.

In Hütte 7, we took that idea quite literally: the house is still three storeys high, but through architecture, its apparent height is no longer the first thing anyone notices.