A Concrete Poem in the Wild
Selected Among 104 Works Worldwide (104 Selected Works)
Selected for ArchDaily × gestalten’s The ArchDaily Guide to Good Architecture,
and featured in Braun Publishing’s Where Architects Stay Around the World.
From 104 selected works of architecture to 120 architectural stays worldwide, Wandering Walls is the only selection from Taiwan in both publications. “104 works worldwide” refers to the 104 projects selected for The ArchDaily Guide to Good Architecture.
A Place for Wind, Light and Sea
Some buildings are made simply to be lived in; others invite you into the forest and remind you what it feels like to be fully alive.
Selected for ArchDaily × gestalten’s The ArchDaily Guide to Good Architecture, Wandering Walls is more than a place to stay. It is a sanctuary shaped in coexistence with Hengchun’s native acacia forest.
In 2008, while travelling around the world, Gavin began imagining an ideal place to live. After two years of searching, he found this quiet hillside overlooking the sea on the northwestern edge of Kenting. In 2012, he invited architect Grace Cheung to transform the native acacia forest and Hengchun’s powerful seasonal winds into a work of architecture that could be inhabited.
At Wandering Walls, what most guests remember is not a list of features, but a feeling——the angle of morning light across the concrete, the absence of city noise at night, and the first moment they truly hear the wind.
Forest Sound
Leave the noise of the world outside, and hear only the seasonal wind moving through the acacia canopy.
Light
Daylight becomes a measure of time, moving from the textured concrete walls to the edge of the bed, quietly asking you to slow down.
Horizon
A horizon where mountain and sea share the same frame turns the simple act of staying into a deliberate luxury.
Wandering Structure: Letting the Forest Flow
To let the sea breeze pass through and preserve the presence of the trees within the architecture, XRANGE Architects created spatial openings with three non-overlapping curved walls, a strategy described as Vertical Misalignment. Each curved wall moves independently through different levels, weaving between floor slabs like ribbons. The building becomes less a barrier than a passage through which forest and wind can move freely. This structural approach was recognized by the Rethinking The Future Awards in the hospitality category..
Each stay offers a different way of seeing the landscape——not simply a different room, but a different angle from which to encounter mountain and sea.
A Texture Carved by Wind
Responding to Hengchun’s rugged climate, the architect pursued the tactile quality of Lo-Res Curves. The flowing timber-grain texture of the concrete is deliberate: specially sized timber formwork was assembled to follow each curve. To the touch, the walls feel almost geological——as though a massive rock had long stood here, ready to weather wind and time.
Many guests instinctively reach out to touch the walls. What they feel is not decoration, but a texture shaped by material, climate and time.
Floating at Canopy Level
Defying Gravity
The curved walls cantilever as far as 4.5 metres beyond the second- and third-floor slabs. These unsupported “flying walls” challenge gravity structurally while creating the sensation of floating above the acacia canopy, framing the sea horizon like a moving picture.
At the corner, the wall seems to float, while the landscape appears to hold you in place.
Listening to the Wind
Echo Chamber
The windowless side wall acts as a protective shell against the wind, while the cantilevered flying wall creates a vertical Echo Chamber. Rather than blocking sound, it captures and amplifies the rustling of Hengchun’s seasonal winds through the acacia leaves, turning listening to the wind into one of Wandering Walls’ most distinctive sensory experiences.
Late at night, you begin to notice that even the wind has layers.
Touching the Earth
Tactile Landscape
At ground level, the walls hover above the earth, allowing the courtyard’s red soil to visually extend inward. Nature is not sealed outside; earth, dust and the scent of the seasons remain part of the spatial experience. This is architecture that continues to live.
The building changes expression with time, and every guest becomes part of its memory.
Cheung Founder / XRANGE Architects
Grace Cheung is an architect whose work has helped mark a significant chapter in contemporary Taiwanese architecture.
In 2021, the American Institute of Architects recognized her work with an AIA International Design Award, marking the first Taiwan-based practice to receive the distinction and making her the first Chinese woman architect to receive the honor.
A graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, she has worked with Pritzker Prize laureate Rem Koolhaas (OMA), Bernard Tschumi in New York, and Patkau Architects in Canada. Her precise structural language and fluid spatial thinking shaped Wandering Walls into a singular work of architecture with an international voice.
For the traveller, the significance is not the résumé itself. It is the knowledge that the place you inhabit was conceived as a work of architecture, rather than calculated simply as a number of rooms.
From the Wild to the World
104 / ArchDaily × gestalten
Selected among 104 works from more than 40,000 architectural projects worldwide; Wandering Walls is the only selection from Taiwan.
120 / Braun Publishing
Featured among 120 architectural stays in Where Architects Stay Around the World; Wandering Walls is the only selection from Taiwan.
Awards & Media
Recognized by international architecture awards and featured by VOGUE, GQ, ELLE, Home Journal and other media.
First, selected for its architecture.
Then, selected as architecture worth staying in.
104 selected works of architecture × 120 architectural stays worldwide. Wandering Walls is the only selection from Taiwan in both.
ArchDaily and international publisher gestalten jointly published The ArchDaily Guide to Good Architecture, looking back across 15 years and more than 40,000 architectural projects worldwide before selecting 104 works. Wandering Walls is the only project from Taiwan included in the book.
Within its pages, Wandering Walls appears alongside works by Pritzker Prize laureates including Kazuyo Sejima (SANAA) and Alejandro Aravena. For us, the selection recognizes the architectural language created through exposed-concrete “flying walls,” vertical misalignment and a direct response to Hengchun’s landscape and climate.
Braun Publishing later featured Wandering Walls in Where Architects Stay Around the World, a collection of 120 architectural stays worldwide. Wandering Walls is again the only selection from Taiwan. This time, the architecture is not only something to be seen or discussed, but a place considered worth travelling to and experiencing from within.
Wandering Walls has also been included in Contemporary Architecture: Masterpieces around the World, and featured by VOGUE, GQ, ELLE and Home Journal.
Yet for most guests, what matters more than any list is how the place actually feels——quiet, open, and able to slow you down.
Stillness & Everyday Life
Some buildings are like unsigned love letters. They are not made to explain themselves. They simply stand quietly, letting wind pass through and light move across their surfaces. There may be no language here, yet everything seems to speak.
Wind becomes a curve. Light becomes tone. Water becomes breath. A wall, a shaft of light, a reflection on water——each is a sentence written by time.
As we grow older, perhaps we become less interested in noise and possession, and more drawn to places where we can simply coexist——places that fit, allow us to breathe, and leave enough room for the self to remain intact.
The further we travel through life, the more we learn to keep the right distance from the world. When the curtains rise, sunlight can enter without asking anything of us. Sometimes all we need is a place where we can stay without speaking, without performing, and without wanting to leave.
Here, some of the things that once seemed urgent begin to fall away.You stop reaching for your phone. You stop thinking about what to post. You simply begin to inhabit the present.
Wandering Walls is like a small kingdom standing in a quiet landscape. It asks nothing of you. It offers only air, light, architecture and wind. What you do with the rest of your time is entirely your own.
Lie beneath the breeze in the lobby. Rest in a hammock under the sun. Drift on a swing. Or climb to the rooftop, slip into the water, and watch mountain and sea meet at the horizon.
Here, nothing needs to be excessive. Everything is just enough.
If what you are looking for is not excitement but a stretch of time that belongs entirely to you, you may understand why some people travel all the way to the edge of the peninsula for this place.