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Architects: Malik Architecture
- Area: 120000 ft²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Bharath Ramamrutham
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Lead Architect: Ketan Chaudhary
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Engineering: Global Engineering Services, Mr.Vivek Garg
Text description provided by the architects. Lonavla, a hill station in the Sahyadris, is the nearest and most popular weekend retreat for the residents of Bombay. Its natural topography, cooler+drier climate, verdant landscapes, and history (Ancient forts + Buddhist cave temples) have attracted uncontrolled development leading to a substantial erosion of the character that defined it.
The Radisson Lonavala Resort grapples with a fundamental problem, a contradiction created by the rapid urbanization of the rural area. The sense of open space connecting to nature is contested by the building forms that emerge through the prescribed building codes and densities.
The site is located in a predominantly residential neighborhood. It consists of two separate plots divided by a planned accessway that has been adopted by the project but cannot be built on. The architecture emerges from the site, topography, from the region's material history (Black Basalt & Wood) and adapts to both flexible and fixed (Public + Private) programs.
The feeling of a multi-story building has been avoided by developing the ground as organic, free-form public spaces with split-level topographical connections. Extant forms (Bastions/ Large masonry walls), and stepped courts (kunds) animate the built landscape. The room blocks hover above the ground, as bold, abstract volumes with louvered permeable secondary walls. The ground rises vertically into a shaded atrium courtyard. The organizational structure makes nature the protagonist and deploys space, material, and light in ways that replace the experience of a 'Building' with a journey through a landscape that is alternately built and unbuilt.
It is also important to view the project in comparison to hospitality spaces with similar densities. Hotels in the vicinity follow urban models, with thematic applications, the identity often being alien to the place.
Developing an idea that eliminates the decoration, and embellishment to let natural building materials work within a framework that responds to a dense program, that prioritizes response to the place, memory, and climate instead of pre-conceived visual notions is a major challenge.
