The Commune started as a showcase for modern architecture on the Great Wall and evolved into one of Asia's most exciting, and affordable, design hotels
Chinese culture was always writ large in its architecture. The Great Wall and the traditional courtyard home both speak of a world view in which everything within the wall is "family" and everything without "not-family". Even the sterile Soviet architecture of the Mao era had an ineradicable Chinese aftertaste: the roofs sitting like ill-fitting Chinese hats on urban housing blocks.
Today, a new architecture is emerging, befitting its go-getting temperament: the O-shaped skyscraper being built for the Chinese state television network, Norman Foster's 80-acre dragon-shaped airport, and the ribbon-like tangles of the showcase "bird's nest" stadium, which is rising up against the Beijing skyline a year ahead of schedule for the 2008 Olympic games (London, take note).
"There's no doubt that China is undergoing a design revolution," says Herbert Ypma of Hip Hotels. "Because Mao wiped out much of the pomp in architecture, they're less restricted by tradition, so you see this extraordinary creative detail emerging, the reference to the bird's nest soup of Chinese tradition; it's a message to the world that they're raising the bar."
Design hotels, too, are breaking earth across China: Fuchun in Hangzhou is a modern take on a Taoist temple; David Tang's melding of cosmopolitan chic and tradition in a former palace in Beijing; and superbrand W's planned 2008 launch for Shanghai in what they see as "the most important travel market of the next two decades". But the summit of China's hotel-design hubris is the (daftly named) Commune by the Great Wall.
Set in 2,000 walnut-tree acres 40 miles north of Beijing, with its northern perimeter traced by a breathtaking stretch of unreconstructed Great Wall, The Commune is the vanity project of rags-to-riches Beijinger Zhang Xin. Her intention was to create a global showcase for Asian architecture by hand-picking 12 prominent architects from across the continent and offering them $1 million each to design a dream home. The results are startling.
The See and Seen house by Cui Kai features one horizontal floor overswept by a second jutting level, like an insurmountable white cliff; whereas the Cantilever House by another Chinese architect, Antonio Ochoa, is a sharp-edged box, vivid coral against the shifting skies like racy undies hung out to dry. The 12 houses, from Furniture house to Airport house, Bamboo Wall and Split house are, as their names suggest, both unstintingly modern and liberally juiced with Asian design heritage. They're also happily observant of form over function, which, after the initial fanfare of The Commune's 2002 launch and decoration with design accolades, left their uses somewhat limited.
Repackaged as a style hotel the same year, it was an indifferent fit, and pricey to boot.
Enter hoteliers Kempinski, which took over management of the site in August 2005, tarted up the main properties, then kicked back into the sloping green valley with a rash of new builds based on favourites among the original designs. The Commune by The Great Wall Kempinski (try that with a mouthful of Beijing duck) launched properly this month, yet it has already housed the well-moisturised limbs of A-listers such as Beyonc , Uma Thurman and Ren e Zellweger.
The Commune now comprises 42 villas, which for the most part are cleverly executed, their acreages of glass window framing views of the sinuous north Chinese landscape. For the best of these, try the original Cantilever house, with its wraparound views of The Great Wall, or lather up like a pet Ming concubine with a breath-catching view of one of the world's wonders from the bathtub of Shared house. Kempinski has thrown the net a little wider with decor, with international design pieces (Newson, Starck, Mouille) sharing space with modern twists on traditional Asian design, such as beds based on the traditional Chinese risen platform.
Part awe-inspiring, part confusing, The Commune is very modern-day China: 2,000 years of history juxtaposed with leapfrog designs and half-exquisite, half-shoddy craftsmanship (sharp edges and brutal whites are a demanding mistress when it comes to upkeep). The standard rooms are offered at 179 per-night year round, much more affordable than the original starting price of $888.
Yet the best bit, of course, is getting to walk a private strip of The Great Wall, away from the touristy tat and hustle bustle of the reconstructed stone wall at nearby Badaling, where most Chinese Wall-goers congregate.
At The Communev, you get an iconic stretch - the six-metre wide, smooth-worked stone walls with turreted fortification towers built during the Ming dynasty - overgrown with foliage and with stones kicked out here and there. It is a deeply satisfying, precarious hike, down steps and up steep inclines reclaimed by tree roots.
It's 50 minutes south down the Badaling highway to Beijing. In the early 90s, Beijing was enclosed within two ringroads; now there are five. There is something knock-you-sideways about Beijing's expansion - a sense that the foundations are being laid for something big. Yes, you can chart this in construction cranes stretching up into the yellow-white skies, but also in the boisterous Beijing youth culture that's so progressive as to have thrown up a lesbian pop chart topper (Qiao Qiao with Love Does Not Discriminate).
The Dashanzi arts village, or "798", is now the locus of Beijing cool. Once Asia's largest military electronics plant, there are now over a hundred modern art galleries in the tourist-friendly area. The district was built in the 50s with the help of East German engineers and many of the buildings have the serrated roofs and stark right angles typical of Bauhaus architecture. The north-facing skylights, originally designed to provide the most consistent light for working with fine tools, make for great gallery illumination.
Tamsin Roberts, the young curator of Red T Gallery, has spotted the opportunity to ride the waves of an artistic coming-of-age in Beijing that recently led Charles Saatchi to admit he had been wrong to dismiss modern Chinese art. "They keep threatening to bulldoze the district," she says. "But it won't happen before the Olympics. The streets around here have been repaved - and the local government paid for it, not the gallerists."
Modern-day China - its architecture, its quickened cultural pulse - is defined by such mixed messages, a sign that the country's ambition to create a unique capitalism "with Chinese characteristics" may be realised. One part bird's nest, to one part brave new world.
The Commune by The Great Wall Kempinski (00 800 426 313 55 kempinski.com) rooms from 179 per per night B&B inc tax. British Airways (0870 8509850, ba.com) flies Heathrow-Beijing from 544 rtn inc tax.
