The references to history begin with the overall concept of the hotel as a courtyard building, inspired in plan by traditional Chinese architecture in which the courtyard is the center of life. The hotel has an inward focus—in contrast to the hustle and bustle of modern Guangzhou outside—stacking vertically around a central courtyard.

Guests arrive in an entry hall of dark, smoked oak floors with a polished appearance and columns clad in bronze and white-washed oak. The metaphor is a colonial-era manor, with 26-foot ceilings providing an airy, expansive feel. That colonial estate sense is heightened by floor-to-ceiling oak shutters that are opened in the morning and closed in the evening to focus the guest’s experience on the interior.