Xinghai Castle seems to be two different designs

December 13, 2016 10:54 PM

I just ran across this hotel in China which is built to look like a castle named "Xinghai Castle" in Dalian, CN. Looking into it though, it seems that there are photos showing it with two fairly different designs, how can this be explained? The designs are pretty different if you look closely. Did they tear down the whole old castle and rebuild it?

Design A (old)

Design B (new)

posted by yticmic to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

Maybe I'm just blind, but I'm not seeing anything which couldn't (hypothetically) be explained by the difference in camera angle?
posted by juv3nal at 11:15 PM on December 13, 2016

Pictures from the official hotel website seem to match the "new" design.
posted by flicken at 11:23 PM on December 13, 2016

I think the old pictures are from before completion of the build, roofs have been added to some of the towers and extra buildings seem to have been added.
posted by Akke at 11:28 PM on December 13, 2016

The perspective is very different in both photos, and that makes the structure look more different than it is. I think they only did some changes to the facade, even reusing parts of it in newer buildings.
posted by Promethea at 6:17 AM on December 14, 2016

It's two completely different buildings on the same site - Design A was razed and Design B built in its place. I checked out historical imagery on Google Earth, and it looks like Design A was constructed between 2000 and 2003 and expanded gradually until 2009. Somewhere between October 2009 and May 2010 it was totally demolished (it's an empty lot in the 5/11/2010 image), and then a completely new building (Design B) is under construction until 2014 or 2015.
posted by theodolite at 8:27 AM on December 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

Since Chinese castle hotel mysteries are apparently my thing now, here's a screenshot gallery.
posted by theodolite at 8:34 AM on December 14, 2016 [6 favorites]