A Concrete Poem in the Wilderness
Selected Among the World’s Best (104 Highlights)
Featured in ArchDaily × gestalten The ArchDaily Guide to Good Architecture.
Selected from 40,000+ projects worldwide, The Wandering Walls is Taiwan’s only featured work. “World’s Best” refers to the book’s curated selection of 104 featured projects.
Keeping the Wind, the Light, and the Sea—Just for You
Some architecture is built to be lived in; some is built to help you disappear into the forest and feel alive again.
Featured in ArchDaily × gestalten The ArchDaily Guide to Good Architecture—a curated selection of the world’s best contemporary works , The Wandering Walls is more than a place to stay—it is a sanctuary that coexists with the Hengchun acacia forest.
In 2008, while traveling the world, Gavin began imagining a life defined by a space of his own. After two years of searching, he found this quiet hillside on the northwestern edge of Kenting—facing the sea. In 2012, he invited architect Grace Cheung to shape the wild acacia grove and the seasonal falling winds into a place you can truly inhabit.
At The Wandering Walls, most guests remember not the labels, but the sensations—the morning light’s angle on the wall, the nighttime quiet without city noise, and the first moment they truly heard the wind.
Forest Sound
Noise stays outside the world—only the falling wind, whispering through acacia leaves, remains.
Light
Sunlight becomes a measure of time, sliding from rugged walls to the edge of the bed—reminding you to slow down.
Horizon
A horizon framed by mountain and sea—where choosing to stay becomes a refined decision.
A Structural Wander: Letting the Forest Flow
To let sea breezes pass through—and to keep shifting shadows inside—XRANGE Architects carved space through three vertically misaligned curved walls (Vertical Misalignment). Each wall enters and exits independently on different levels, weaving like ribbons between floor slabs—so the building is no longer a barrier, but a passage where wind and forest can move freely. This breakthrough approach was recognized with a Rethinking The Future International Architecture Award (Hospitality category).
As a result, every stay feels like a new way of reading the landscape—not a change of room, but a change of angle in how you meet the mountains and the sea.
Textures Sculpted by the Wind
Facing Hengchun’s rugged climate, the architect pursued a tactile sensibility described as Lo-Res Curves. The flowing wood-grain imprint on the walls is not accidental, but precisely calculated—crafted with custom-sized timber formwork that follows the curvature. When you touch the surface, it feels like a massive rock that has stood here for ages—ready to be weathered by wind and time.
Many guests find themselves reaching out to touch the walls without thinking—because it isn’t decoration, but a texture left by climate and time.
Floating: Eye Level with the Canopy
Defying Gravity
The curved walls cantilever outward from the second and third floors—reaching up to 4.5 meters. This “flying wall,” unsupported at the ground, challenges gravity structurally; visually, it makes you feel as though you’re floating above an ocean of acacia—framing the horizon as a moving painting.
At the turning point, the wall seems to hover—and you feel held by the view.
Listening to Wind: Forest Resonance
Echo Chamber
A windowless side wall acts as a wind shield, while the cantilevered flying wall forms a vertical Echo Chamber. It is not meant to block sound, but to catch and amplify the rustle of falling winds through acacia leaves—turning “listening to wind” into one of the most powerful sensory experiences here.
Late at night, you’ll realize—wind has layers.
Touching Ground: An Extension of Red Earth
Tactile Landscape
The first-floor walls hover slightly above the ground, allowing the courtyard’s red soil to extend inward. Nature isn’t kept outside—dust, earth, and seasonal scents become part of the space. This is architecture that feels alive.
A building that changes its expression over time—and you become part of its memory.
Cheung 張 淑 征 Founder / XRANGE Architects
Grace Cheung (張淑征) is not only a contemporary architect—she is a trailblazer who has helped shape history.
In 2021, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) awarded her an International Design Award—making her the first architecture practice from Taiwan to receive the honor, and the first woman of Chinese heritage to receive this distinction.
She earned her M.Arch at Columbia University and previously worked with Pritzker Prize laureate Rem Koolhaas (OMA), Bernard Tschumi in New York, and Patkau Architects in Canada. With a precise tectonic sensibility and an avant-garde, fluid spatial vision, she shaped The Wandering Walls into an architectural singularity that speaks confidently on an international stage. To collect The Wandering Walls is to collect a chapter in Taiwan’s architectural journey into the world.
For guests, this isn’t a résumé—it’s assurance: the space you inhabit is built to the standard of a true work, not calculated by room count.
From Wilderness to the World
ArchDaily
Taiwan’s only featured work in The ArchDaily Guide to Good Architecture (104 highlights).
International Awards
Recognized internationally for a breakthrough structural language.
Lifestyle Media
Featured by VOGUE / GQ / ELLE / Home Journal.
This means: you’re not simply staying in a beautiful place—you’re living inside a work selected by the world.
For many, their first encounter with The Wandering Walls begins with four words: World’s Best.
In one sentence: chosen from 40,000+ projects worldwide, 104 were selected—and The Wandering Walls is Taiwan’s only entry.
ArchDaily and international publisher gestalten co-published The ArchDaily Guide to Good Architecture, reviewing 15 years and more than 40,000 projects around the globe. From this vast archive, 104 works were selected as contemporary reference points that can be cited—and The Wandering Walls is the only featured work from Taiwan.
In its pages, we appear alongside Pritzker Prize laureates such as Kazuyo Sejima (SANAA) and Alejandro Aravena. It proves that even on a red-soil hillside at Taiwan’s southern edge—when we remain humble to the land and uncompromising in design— the “flying wall” in exposed concrete and the aesthetics of “vertical misalignment” can stand at a level that converses with the world’s leading architecture.
Later, Swedish publisher Braun also included The Wandering Walls in Contemporary Architecture: Masterpieces around the World; it has also been featured by VOGUE, GQ, ELLE, and Home Journal —making it a wilderness choice for high-net-worth travelers seeking a refined, hidden luxury.
Yet for most who stay, what matters more than any list is this—it’s truly quiet, truly expansive, and it truly slows you down.
Gaze and Daily Life
Some architecture is like an unsigned love letter—designed for no one in particular, eager to explain nothing. It simply stands, quietly, letting wind pass through its body and light dance across its skin. Here, there may be no language, yet everything speaks—
Wind becomes curvature; light becomes tone; water becomes breath. A bend of wall, a stroke of light, a pool of reflection—each is a sentence written by time.
After forty, you stop chasing crowds. You loosen your grip on possession. You begin to lean toward—closeness, and quiet coexistence.
In youth, we live too intensely, approach too carefully. Now we only want to live “comfortably”: a fit that’s just right, air that’s just enough, a life that can hold the soul—no longer drifting above human warmth.
The further we walk, the more we learn the right distance from the world. When the curtains roll up, sunlight can enter—and the heart doesn’t need to hold itself so tight. Regardless of place, regardless of relationship, you simply want a place to be—no need to speak, no desire to leave—only those presences you can breathe with, without bracing yourself.
Here, you’ll slowly lose the desires you once thought were essential.You won’t want to scroll your phone. You won’t rush to post photos.
You’ll want to do one thing well: live fully in the present.
The Wandering Walls is like a kingdom standing in a pure land—no noise, no expectations of who you should be. It offers only air, light, architecture, and wind. The rest is yours to decide: how you will live.
You can do nothing in the wind of the lobby. You can hang in the outdoor hammock and sunbathe. You can swing and blank out. Or climb to the rooftop, soak in water, and watch mountains and sea hold each other at the edge of infinity.
Here, everything is just right. No more is needed.
If what you’re seeking isn’t excitement, but a stretch of blank time that belongs only to you, you’ll understand why some people come all the way to the peninsula’s edge—just for this.