Resort to tradition.

With this naturally ventilated luxury hotel, Jimmy Lim has proved that his domestic architectural skills, translate successfully into other building types

Times were when all international hotels looked alike, no matter what the location. But not any longer. The resort hotel in Southeast Asia now commonly carries with it high expectations of cultural and tropical expression, designed to assure paying guests that they are indeed vacationing in an exotic location, far away from the familiar home environment. The results are at best mixed, invariably bordering on the kitsch, and rarely rising to the real challenges of site and climate.

The Impiana Resort on the east coast of Malaysia is a welcome exception to the rule. Given Jimmy Lim's propensity to treat his houses as miniature resort hotels, it was inevitable that he should eventually try his hand at the real thing. The typically modest-height, semi-private purpose and predominantly cellular structure of the type also lends itself more readily than most modern building types to a transfer of valuable lessons learnt from domestic architecture. Many of the features that have come to be associated with Lim's houses re-emerge in the Impiana.

The hotel is on a 35-acre site at Cherating in the state of Pahang, a popular coastal resort area that boasts the finest white sand beaches in the Malaysian Peninsula. The linear plan follows the line of the beach front and was dictated by the decision to provide all rooms, both private and public, with unobstructe views towards the sea -- as well as views of the spectacular sunrise. Reception lounge area, restaurants, bars and swimming pool are clustered together in the central public zone, while bedrooms are strung out either side in two wings of equal length, which are each further broken up into three blocks of diminishing height from the centre. All bedrooms are accessed from the landward side by open-air corridors carried by a separate structural frame.

The entire concrete-framed structure is raised up off the ground -- 4m beneath the central zone (partly occupied by one of the restaurants) and 1.8m beneath the bedroom wings -- in the manner of the coastal fishing villages the hotel is meant to recall. Aside from such romantic considerations, raising the structure in this fashion had the useful effect in construction of reducing earthworks an drainage to a minimum, as well as keeping the building permanently clear of flood-water -- common in the monsoon season. This are much the same practical purposes that the raised structure serves in the traditional model. The tactic also reduces any barriers the hotel might otherwise create between the landward and seaward aspects, permitting the natural sandy ground level to flow uninterrupted beneath the building, visually and physically connecting both sides of the site.

Unusually, it is the landward aspect of the hotel, with its multi-storey circulation frame punctuated by open staircase towers, that commands attention. Most architects would have treated both circulation and landward faces as secondary architectural elements, to be dealt with as unobtrusively as possible But for Lim this is the sacred processional route, lent an original, abstract twist in its cranked white frame, and Lim gives the stacked open passages all the attention deserving of primary elements in a carefully controlled spatial experience. Thus a walk along these unique corridors constantly yields unexpected pleasures, like the peeks out towards the sea through the gaps between each block, and the changing, extended vistas down each twisting length of the building -- not to mention the fresh air.

Lim concentrates his most dramatic effects, though, where they will have the greatest impact on visitors and arriving guests, in the 14m high reception space. The client had originally specified the use of timber throughout the structure, but this was eventually restricted to roof structures and window walls for reasons of economy. Lim more than makes up for the restriction in the main public spaces, running riot with a vast, pitched roof of timber supported by robust trusses, so that the immediate impression on entering the hotel is predominantly that of a timber structure, reminiscent, as intended, of local tradition, but blown up to a great and suitably awe-inspiring scale. The effect is made all the more dramatic by the daring insertion of a thin strip of glass in the very apex of the roof, allowing Gothic streaks of light to penetrate the space from a great height. Such a device would normally be rejected because of the expected heat build-up in the roof. But in t'ai chi fashion, Lim turns the energy of the sun to his advantage by letting the heated air accumulate till it explodes out of the confined roof space through the surrounding openings -- there are no walls at all on either east or west fronts in this area -- increasing a draft movement of cooler air at ground level. If any evidence was needed that Lim's domestic architectural skills could be translated successfull into other building types and dimensions, here it is.