In contemporary China, rural culture is increasingly giving way to the country's relentless pace of socio-economic transformation and many villages are being abandoned by their inhabitants who are moving to new residential centres.

In Yu County, where a number of historic local traditions such as wood and paper crafting have survived, Fortune Art (FA) Homestay has selected Xiyaotou out of 100 villages as a "pilot" village to launch an initiative to revitalise the local economy by providing villagers with an income based on tourism, hospitality and gastronomy services.

The traditional cave dwellings of the area were the cultural and figurative inspiration for the project designed by Studio A()VOID, which involves the construction of 9 buildings with an organic and irregular shape connected by raised wooden walkways, offering a view of the surrounding landscape.

The two-storey buildings, 7 metres high and arranged on two levels, distributed according to a 4mx6m grid based on the length/width ratio of the original cave houses, are topped by large skylights which - almost in the spirit of Gothic architecture - enhance the verticality of the structure, inviting the eye to go upwards.

A double-layered grey brick shell preserves heat during the winter months while the shape of the structures and the position of the windows create a "chimney effect" to facilitate ventilation and reduce summer temperatures.

On the exterior surfaces, some of the overhanging bricks remain as traces of the construction process, marking the footholds of construction scaffolding and creating shadow effects based on the trajectory of the sun.

In "resistant" rural China, Grotto Retreat Xiyaotou is a refuge for rediscovering the flavour of an ancestral dwelling full of charm and fascination, not so distant - in its values and principles - from a timeless concept of a "hearth" where one can experience the warmth of a home and a sense of belonging to a place.