Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] Sala Chaweng is a 144-room hotel in Samui Island’s Chaweng Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches in the Gulf of Thailand. It has 2 phases, 52-room for the Beachfront and 82-room for the Roadside. These two phases are divided by a street. Sala Chaweng Beachfront has a single big swimming pool courtyard next to the sea, which is bright and active, whereas Sala Chaweng Roadside is composed of many smaller courtyards, without linear circulation, full of existing trees. The Roadside is shaded, it is more passive, private and quite than the Beachfront.
Each courtyard in the Roadside has a domestic characteristic because we think that it is easier for our guests to remember the spaces. These 5 courtyards are named the Outdoor Stairwell, the Outdoor Dining Room, the Outdoor Living Room, the Outdoor Play Room and the Outdoor Bedroom. Each of them is occupied by household furnitures and elements such as single-flight stairs, 12-seat-round table, sofas, swings, beds and giant lamps. All of these domestic furnitures are placed in-between existing trees and newly planted greenery. Our guests can relax in beds, larger than king-size, shaded by big trees next to the public swimming pool, having a drink served from the pool bar and feel that, in this strange setting, they are indeed on holiday.
We direct our attention to the sky. In every transitions between the courtyards, we open the vertical voids in different shapes, size and materials. Layers of bamboo rectangle voids are placed between the Outdoor Dining Room and the Outdoor Bedroom whereas oval concrete voids in white colour are composed in the transition space between the Outdoor Dining Room and the Outdoor Living Room. We encourage our guests to look up at the sky and to feel the warmth of the sun.
A dominant architectural element of Sala Chaweng Roadside are the white walls. They are long, massive, sometimes concave and sometimes convex. The effects of shadow are what we are interested in when we were drawing the walls. It is only in the spa area that we use colours, dark green and later on pink. These coloured walls set a new spatial experience to our spa guests. As the sun moves, the light changes its direction, architecture becomes alive. Bathtub of the spa room is placed in the garden surrounded by the dark green walls. The clear glass door brings nature into the treatment room. There is no clear distinction between the interior and the exterior spaces in Sala Chaweng Roadside.
There are 4 types of room in Sala Chaweng Roadside, namely Garden Two Bedroom Pool Suite 329 sq.m., Garden One Bedroom Duplex Pool Suite 181 sq.m., Garden Pool Villa 77 sq.m. and Garden Deluxe Balcony 45 sq.m. We also design a variety of objects composed in the room, such as the lamps, the beach bag, rattan shelves and knotted ropes for pulling the drawers. Each room tends to have a private backyard that our guests can relax on a huge circular outdoor bed next to their private swimming pool. The architecture of the interior in Sala Chaweng is the extension of the exterior and vice versa.
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