Amanyangyun（安缦养云）丨中国上海丨澳大利亚建筑师Kerry Hill

At Aman’s new Shanghai resort, guests will find comfort in 400-year-old heritage homes

Designed by architect Kerry Hill, Amanyangyun is a unique village resort set amid a relocated camphor forest just outside downtown Shanghai.

Numbers don't lie. These ones tell the story of 10,000 camphor trees, and 50 heritage homes that travelled 800 kilometres, and were reborn over a period of 10 long years.

In 2007, when Chinese businessman Ma Dong, only 28 at the time, decided to embark on a project of mammoth proportions—a mission to find a new home for an old endangered forest town—he didn't know the secrets he would be unearthing while doing so.

Living room in an antique villa at Amanyangyun. Photo Courtesy: Aman Resorts

For Ma Dong and his team of engineers, botanists, craft and architecture specialists, the move threw up—along with the myriad challenges of relocating—craft and building techniques dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties these 400-year-old houses belonged to. Carved in stone, these ornate relief works and mottoes of ancient Chinese families, found a new lease of life in an expansive resort called Amanyangyun, on the outskirts of Shanghai.

Slated to open in November this year, the hotel will have 26 reconstructed villas—the pièce de résistance of which is Nan Shufang, which will stand at the centre of the property.

For Australian architect Kerry Hill, who designed this “new old” project, it started with a bit of scepticism—how do you design a brand new property fashioned out of buildings practically uprooted from a time gone by? But soon, things fell into place—metaphorically and literally.

Dining room. Photo Courtesy: Aman Resorts

The structures act as functional backdrops, while informing new designs—a set of contemporary buildings with interiors in wood, bamboo and stone. Amanyangyun adds a new narrative to an old story, reaffirming our belief that building anew is, at the end of the day, about reinterpreting the old. And as for the old—as Hill himself says—“You don't attempt to rebuild the old.”