Location - Maskeliya, Sri Lanka

Our proposed design for this Tea Plantation Resort receded into the Tea / Jungle between Rock Cliff and Water. Our Master Plan was driven by our original options, the revised program, and the collective search for an authentic and original guest experience of the Sri Lankan Highlands. We proposed in addition to the spectacular views to rock, peaks, water, and waterfalls that “an immersion in Tea” in the heart of the Kandy Tea district should distinguish this Presidential Boutique Hotel from any other destination in the world. For example, the hourly owner/guest experience—morning to noon to afternoon to evening—should be carefully integrated within the old and young V.P. Tea and the Presidential Suite clusters be positioned at the base of the Rock Cliff Jungle at the highest most exclusive edge of the property preserving the maximum area for newly expanded V.P. Tea fields whose contoured patterns are the most memorable quality of this place. The plan and section of the hotel and suites was imagined as an open Kandyan Meeting Hall that has been re-inhabited with dark värati walls and floors. The vertical scale of the Hall (Suites) is both a climatic and experiential response to the verticality of the highlands landscape.