Island idyll

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 1994 by Effie C. Macdonald

This dramatic hotel complex is an enlightened response to the fragile ecology o a Malaysian island.

Pulau Langkawi is peninsular Malaysia's largest west coast island, overlooking both the Andaman Sea and the border with Thailand to the north. The island is luxuriantly forested and boasts some of the country's finest coastal scenery. Until recently, because of the island's sheer topographical inaccessibility, only a handful of local fishermen, villagers and smugglers were privy to these natural wonders.

Yet this splendid isolation could not last. Since the early '80s, the Malaysian government has pursued a vigorous policy of development on the island, in an attempt to secure a stake in the increasingly lucrative Asian tourist market. Over the last decade, several resort hotels have been constructed, but in the urge to build quickly, the results have not always been architecturally distinguished or environmentally sympathetic.

The Detai, designed by Singapore-based Kerry Hill Architects, is one of the mos recent and most notable in its enlightened response to extremes of both landscape and climate. Set in 1800 acres of primary rainforest at Datai Bay on the north-western tip of the island, the new hotel forms the first stage of a larger residential resort development. The area contains several important natural features--the sea (with a coral reef), a sweeping sandy beach, the rainforest and a highly evolved and sensitive eco-system of swamps, streams and wildlife. Conservation of this fragile environment was a key design determinant As a result, the hotel is set back from the obvious position on the edge of the ocean, and instead located on a forest ridge 300m inland and 40m above sea-level.

Like some kind of primitive jungle temple, the new building responds to the breathtaking topography with great serenity. But the complex is far from monolithic -- it is a loose kampong of buildings, dispersed around the site lik a broken string of beads, which all ultimately connect up to the main block tha houses public facilities and accommodation. Yet rather than introduce a massive imposing volume into the landscape, about one-third of the guest accommodation has been hired off into domestic-scale villas. These cluster around the forest, below the ridge, like tree houses, elevated on concrete piles and connected to the public areas and the beach by an organic network of pathways, terraces and timber bridges. Each villa has a private sun deck, from which guests can freely commune with nature.

The main hotel building is perched loftily on the ridge above, with the public areas overlooking a man-made plateau formed by the swimming pool deck. This clearing in the forest is the pivot around which various activities take place. The health club and services areas are contained below deck, with a pavilion restaurant perched vertiginously at its edge, supported on slender tree trunk columns felled during the laborious process of preparing the site.

Guest rooms are placed in wings to the east and west of the public areas. Rooms are reached by means of timber walkways, slightly detached from the building facades to form a series of small open courtyards. This layering of elements encourages natural cross-ventilation and provides cooling through breezes rathe than air conditioning. Deep roof overhangs provide effective shade and shelter.

In offering guests a range of experiences that transcend their normal routine, hotels have strong inherent social and stage setting functions. At the Datai, the relationship of the buildings to their setting creates a marvellous natural idyll, which visitors are encouraged to savour at every opportunity. For instance, to reach the beach from the main public block, guests descend a monumental staircase to the forest floor and follow a pathway among the trees. This leads to a boardwalk raised above the swamp lands and eventually to the beach club, an agglomeration of thatched roof pavilions built entirely from locally mined stone and deliberately oversized timber columns, again salvaged from site clearance operations.

Throughout the project, Hill's design seeks to produce architecture that is bot site and climate specific. Individual buildings are conceived as responses to the intense tropical climate and make extensive use of locally available materials, such as Balau timber, Belian wood shingles and Langkawi stone and marble. Hill also manages to avoid inept pastiches of Malay vernacular, and instead draws on the fundamentals of indigenous tropical building forms to produce an enlightened synthesis of tradition and modernity, gloriously at one with nature.