The design is inspired by sea creatures, which Nanji Island is famous for, such as nudibranch. The "mollusk" lifts itself by its soft legs and stretches its tentacles to explore different directions. The public part of the hotel resembles a floating space above the sand. The sandy ground blends into the hotel to become an outdoor playground in the shadow cast by the building above. The building blends the boundaries between buildings and landscape by its organic form and flexible connectivity. Eco-friendly technologies have been installed to minimize the environmental impacts.

Yan Pan, the co-founder and design principle of SpActrum. He graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London, under the supervision of the legendary architect and architectural educator Professor Sir Peter Cook. Pan started his career in London since 2003, and has worked in high-profile design firms, such as Fosters + Partners, KPF and RTKL. His practice cover a wide range of projects, include urban regeneration for Chinese traditional villages, vacation town strategic designs, large-scale public and commercial building designs, art district redevelopment, housing renovations, fashion show scenes designs, and boutique fashion shop rebranding and so on, and have won international awards including AIA SH Award, A’ Design Award, IDA, Asia Design Awards, etc.

SpActrum is a Beijing and London based architectural design studio founded by Yan Pan and Zhen Li, graduates from Bartlett and the AA School, who have been working in architecture in London for many years. The mission of SpActrum is to undertake alternative research methods and critical practice to create new architecture with the quality of “profound reality”.