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Architects: T3 ARCHITECTS
- Area: 1920 m²
- Year: 2021
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Photographs:Bruce Vincentiis
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Manufacturers: COTTO, Haffele, K-Cement, SCG
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Lead Architects: Charles Gallavardin, Tereza Gallavardin, Dominique Desmet
Text description provided by the architects. T3 Architects designed the Master Plan of the Coconut Club Recreational Park located in Phnom Penh, dedicated to kids, teenagers and families. T3 also designed the main building proposing different activities around hospitality, entertainment and wellness: organic restaurant, river view bar, spa, kids club, event area. All around the building, the idea is to create outdoor activities like bicycle tour, water games area, slides through tropical plants, observation tower.
T3 design follows the bioclimatic principles to avoid the use of air conditioning (except some specific areas like spa and meeting room) with a building located between the riverfront and a lush tropical garden, increasing the natural cross ventilation. The sun protections in bamboo and overhangs have been tailor-made to optimize the control of natural light and avoid overheating, both to improve customers comfort and reduce energy consumption.
This building is also a nice manifesto of a smart biophilic architecture, bringing nature around and into the building, but without increasing the loading on the structure (to avoid over costs), as most of the plants and trees directly grow into the natural soil around the building. The maintenance is easy and the plants can develop easily without sophisticated irrigation system; Low tech solutions are very often the best on long term perspective! The plant used to create a “natural curtain” is Veronia Eliptica. It creates a green facade and bring shadow and sun protection and it grows quickly with a very limited maintenance (almost no need watering under tropical climate).
The main structure of the building is in concrete without any specific finishing, with the main intention to keep the structure in a long term perspective, to get a reasonable carbon footprint. T3 designed some false ceiling made in Bamboo panels which bring coziness and a tropical touch and also allow to hide a part of the electrical cables. Ceiling fans add some comfort in case there is no wind to always ensure a decent thermal comfort for customers at any season or any time of the day. The Coconut Club is already a famous place in Phnom Penh to relax, especially to enjoy sun set and the river breeze!
