Dongguan Gemdale Resort

China, 2010

The design team set out to create a residential environment that affords guests the same luxurious daily experience as the guests of exclusive resorts in Thailand.  These resorts surround people with sparkling blue water, vivid and rich colours, luxurious materials and often fantastic views to surrounding green mountains or ocean lagoons. The famous luxurious resort destinations of Chiangmai, Pattaya, Phuket, Koh Samui and Krabi provided a benchmark for the facilities and environment.  

Applying lessons of the past in our search for an appropriate contemporary expression of traditional Thai culture, we have not simply reproduced traditional famous sites, forms and emblems.  Rather we use them for inspiration and adapt them to a thoroughly modern setting.  Elements included pitched rooves throughout the landscape structures, importantly without the traditional timber finials of historical monuments, allowing the structures to sit harmoniously with the residential architecture.  Similarly, sculptural elements are abstract adaptations of traditional figures not replicas.