Sci-fi hotel in an abandoned Chinese quarry

The Songjiang district near Shanghai, China, has become a popular destination for tourists...apparently fantastically wealthy tourists with an eye for the peculiarly sustainable. This planned sci-fi luxury hotel with underwater rooms and indoor waterfalls has significantly more humble beginnings. It's located in a 100 foot deep abandoned quarry.

Using an already disturbed site like this is key when building in ecologically sensitive areas. And the architects have done an amazing job incorporating the design of the hotel into it's humble surroundings. But the sustainability doesn't stop there. The hotel extends some of the natural landscape over itself by covering it's ground-level roof in dirt and greenery. The green roof would also keep the hotel cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

Even cooler, because the quarry was dug so deep, it will be relatively inexpensive to harness the geothermal energy of the site. There's no word on exactly how much of its power will be generated this way, but it could possibly provide all of the hotels heating and electricity needs.

Aside from all that, the hotel looks ridiculously cool, check out this picture as well.

Via Inhabitat and Atkins Architecture

See Also:
-Living Walls-
-Green Skyscrapers-