Hotel and villa architects in Sri Lanka

Villa 82 began as a 1970s bungalow in a quiet Colombo 6 lane. In 2013 we converted it into a six-bedroom guest villa for Villa Republic, keeping as much of the original structure as the new use would allow. The land fell across the site, so the plan became a sequence of levels and platforms held together by a small central courtyard with a pool at its heart. Staff areas occupy the ground floor and visitor spaces sit above. A villa, not a hotel.

At Ginthota, just outside Galle, Villa Republic’s guest house looks across an estuary towards the sea. Its L-shaped plan puts living spaces and bedrooms in the long arm and kitchen and dining in the short one, with a timber deck reaching out toward the water. The roof pitches are familiar from older Galle houses, the eaves are deep, and the openings are larger than they would have been a century ago.

For a tea estate at Nayapana we proposed a small hotel, for visitors to the factory who do not want to feel that they have checked into anywhere in particular. The rooms sit along a contour, the roofs are low and tile-clad, and the existing trees are left alone. The dining pavilion sits over a small water body. The design is with the client.

At Bentota, Villa Red has clay-tiled roofs on slender timber columns and open verandahs around a courtyard pool. On the wooded hillside at Rumassala we proposed a villa of clay-tiled hipped roofs with deep eaves over two floors, set on rubble-stone retaining walls, with a long pool running out along the slope.

At Elpitiya we designed an adventure park with an archery and rifle-shooting range among its facilities: open pavilions under steep timber roof frames, and a long, low hall tucked into the forest behind.