Renovation should not be a Procrustean alteration against a pre-determined, idealistic image of spaces. Rather, renovation requires one to explore and feature fine properties of the original construction, while addressing the inconvenient ones.
The load bearing brickwork in the construction offered little room for renovation. Architects installed several bookshelves there and cladded the roof and bottom of the stairwell with mirrors, creating an illusion of infinity where the bookshelves and stairs seem to continue forever, which has an effect of elongating the stairwell.
Architects had fences made from locally sourced bamboo and installed them onto the façade to disrupt the elevation’s continuity and to relieve the tension of the building closing up on front yard. The wall becomes an intimate space where village folks will come by to sit down and chat in the sun.
Great emphasis was given to the individual identities of windows and hence the identities of different rooms. The original cookie-cutter windows and ill-conceived balconies were transformed into openings of various sizes to match different identities. Bringing into rooms cobblestones, handmade cloth and furnishings that were designed on site and made of locally sourced old logs allows the hotel rooms to offer their own rich, natural yet very different experiences to the occupants.