Uplights have firm footholds in the outdoors. Angled and flattering, they have found their place in the designer’s seasonless recipe for mood-making – one well adopted by architecture firm GOA and light specialists Prolighting for the Muh Shoou Xixi Hotel, to the liking of surrounding persimmon trees. Their full silhouettes tower over the resort’s linear framework in the dark. Moonlight, an element that the designers sought to integrate into the project, becomes their backboard. By day, the site’s five buildings, built around dottings of lakes over a 36,000m² area in China’s Xixi National Wetland Park, Hangzhou, continue to complement the saturated land. Recycled wood and reflective surfaces, from expanses of glass to marble and an infinity pool, mirror the forest and the sky.