Mountains, Water, and Lotus Flowers

WJD Design-Endless Mind translates a Wuhan legend into a 46,000m² resort interior — abstracting mountains, water, and lotus flowers into form, light, and sustainable material throughout.

There is a particular challenge in translating a legend into architecture. The Wuhan legend of Meeting a Bosom Friend by High Mountains and Flowing Water — a story of profound connection communicated through music, between two people who understood each other completely without words — is the kind of cultural source material that resists literal interpretation. WJD Design-Endless Mind, commissioned to design the 46,000-square-metre interior of Wuhan Senbo Resort, understood this. The three motifs they extracted from it — mountains, water, and lotus flowers — are not depicted in the conventional sense. They are translated, deconstructed, and abstracted into a spatial narrative that runs through the entire project.

The lobby announces the ambition immediately. A giant curved ceiling surface stretches like overlapping high mountains, its complex double-curved geometry engineered through BIM simulation and parametric design, realised in custom-made prefabricated GRG components that allow seamless integration of organic form with load-bearing structure. Decorative panels on the ground resemble rippling water waves. Soft surfaces in guest rooms draw from natural textures. In public areas, faint light and shadow suggest natural veins. An intelligent dimming system simulates the quality of light passing through lotus leaves at different times of day, generating a dynamic indoor atmosphere that shifts between morning and evening without mechanical abruptness.

From preparation to implementation, the essence of the entire process lies in balance — balancing artistic expression with functional needs, brand tone with regional culture, and construction costs with design effects.

The material palette pursues sustainability and sensory coherence simultaneously: GRG, artistic coatings, PETG amber panels, natural wood, and bamboo weaving — all materials chosen for their natural textures and environmental credentials, and for their capacity to make the abstracted imagery of mountain, water, and lotus feel present and tactile rather than merely symbolic.

The project covers a total gross floor area of 118,000 square metres and is designed around the Senbo brand philosophy of exploring nature with love — a parent-child resort concept that must work simultaneously as a childlike, exploratory environment for families and a quiet, contemplative sanctuary for adults seeking tranquillity. That balance — between artistic expression and functional need, brand identity and regional culture, construction cost and design effect — is, as the designers describe it, the essence of the entire process.

In Wuhan, a city of rivers and lakes, the resort has found a way to make its interior speak the landscape. Every guest, moving, sitting, or lying down, engages in what the designers call a silent dialogue with the natural philosophy of the place.

Key takeaways

• WJD Design-Endless Mind avoided literal imitation of natural elements, instead using deconstruction, translation, and abstraction to integrate the imagery of high mountains, flowing water, and lotus flowers into form, colour, and spatial atmosphere across the entire 46,000-square-metre interior — from the curved lobby ceiling engineered with BIM and custom GRG components to ground panels resembling rippling water and an intelligent dimming system simulating light through lotus leaves.
• The material selection — GRG, artistic coatings, PETG amber panels, natural wood, and bamboo weaving — was chosen for both sustainability credentials and tactile resonance with the natural motifs, while parametric design and prefabricated construction methods resolved the structural challenge of integrating complex double-curved organic geometry with large-scale commercial building requirements.
• The design balances two distinct experiential registers within the same space: an exploratory, childlike environment for family guests drawn by the parent-child resort concept, and a quiet contemplative sanctuary for adults seeking tranquillity — reflecting the Senbo brand philosophy of exploring nature with love while rooting the entire interior in the specific cultural landscape of Wuhan, the River City.