A step back in time to the scale, pace, and atmosphere of the old world Caribbean.

The project is an 80 key resort, spa, hospitality school, and 25 private residences on three and half acres of lush botanical gardens. The site is located on a north facing bluff overlooking a bay and commanding a prestigious view of Sint Maarten. One of the oldest continuously operating hotels in the Caribbean had stood on the site until it was completely destroyed by Hurricane Irma. The original hotel had been regarded as the destination for an iconic old world Caribbean experience.

The original owners wanted to remain true to their roots while creating a forward looking resort experience. Beyond creating a resort, the owners wanted to contribute to the broader social, economic, and ecological sustainability of the island and Caribbean. As such, they included a hospitality school and dormitories for a nearby university in their program. Together we proposed organizing the entire hotel around public and private botanical gardens sampling the flora of the Caribbean.

The design embraces the gently sloping site and draws inspiration from the two story papaya and coral colored bungalows with deep porches that characterized the original hotel. The ambition was to step back in time to the scale, pace, and atmosphere of the old world Caribbean with a distinctly new architecture. The entire resort is organized around three large public gardens leading from the lobby to a cliffside pool, restaurant, and spa. These create a straightforward and elegant way-finding solution to the 3.5 acres site. The gardens also help control separate circulation paths for different programs. The flow of the hotel guests, condo owners, hospitality school students, and visitors to the restaurants and pools are discretely curated across the site.

Paths branch from each courtyard to the perimeter of the site through clusters of hotel and condo units. The spaces between these outlying units are designed as smaller and less defined courtyard gardens. Their open corners allow views out through the density of the site. This arrangement allows for overall greater density than the original hotel while maintaining the distinctive feeling of an organically planned old world Caribbean village.

Local coral stone and concrete is used for all exterior elements. The entire poolside bar and terraces are made from stone cut on site. The hotel rooms are stacked in two and three story bungalows connected by canopies and bridges providing shade to the levels below. Each bungalow is oriented towards the prevailing trade winds. Self-shading, window positioning, and the buildings’ orientations help keep the units ventilated, minimizing cooling and mechanical ventilation. The top floor units have a dropped insulated ceiling and further insulation is provided by low-maintenance green roofs.

In character with the original hotel, each unit has a front porch. Interior design details such as a wall mounted daybed, platform bed, recessed media center, hidden ambient lighting throughout, and “cabinet-less” kitchenette are modern, comfortable, serve multiple purposes, and are operationally simple.

Clusters of bungalows embrace the topography of the site and create meandering paths between and reminiscent of the original hotel — similar to walking through a Caribbean village. While the plan looks organic it is based on a rational 18m x 18m construction grid and the span of regionally available truck-mounted cranes. Strip footings are used as a cost-efficient foundation strategy and minimize site excavation.

The architecture builds with the natural forces of the site, embraces local building resources, and presents an opportunity for local craft. As the entire island builds with haste out of concrete in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, traditional craft, construction techniques, and site planning are being forgotten. Our design embraces concrete for its strength against the elements and affordable modularity. Every unit is planned around 2m x 9m concrete plates precast on site. These plates are used as floors and ceilings to create a terraced three-dimensional landscape resistant to hurricane and seismic events. Instead of hiding low-spec concrete behind stucco parging, a higher density 6500+ PSI concrete is used. As such, it can be left exposed and polished to reveal the soft colors of the local sands and aggregates. Crushed coral stone and seashells are scattered throughout the floors of the amenity spaces and perimeters of the courtyards to provide subtle wayfinding signals and further connect the building to the site.

The concrete plates are supported by a series of concrete walls which are more affordable than columns, create cool thermal mass, and are engineered for both hurricane and seismic events. The composition of these walls provides acoustic buffering between hotel units. On each floor between the concrete plates, a lighter material and structural system is created.

The hotel rooms and amenities are primarily framed and clad in natural woods. Ipe, Tigerwood, and Angelim are selected for their ability to outlast heavy commercial concrete construction on the island as well as their rich red, orange, and brown colors. Their tones nod to the colors of the original hotel. These woods are embraced for their warm humanizing effects and ability to be crafted by local carpenters. The deep concrete overhangs provide additional protection to these materials from hurricane projectiles. The overhangs further reduce the maintenance on these already nearly maintenance free wood species.

The people and landscapes in the Caribbean, on the Dutch side of Sint Maarten in particular, are full of expressive emotions and colors. The city where we come from, New York, and many other cities, tend to level out personalities a bit. By comparison, people in cities sometimes start to dress similar and monotone. The general level of emotional expression seems to be averaged out across everyone in the city. We love cities, but they do change us in ways we are not always aware of. On the islands it’s different. No one changes for anyone or anything. Everyone you meet is the purest form of themselves. Peoples’ expressions, languages, clothes, and behavior have an incredible dynamic range. The same could be said about the colors, aromas, and climate of the islands. They are full of vivid contrasts. The atmosphere can be thick or clear. Even the water, sands, rocks, grasses, and hammocks create an incredible range of textures that you are constantly experiencing. We hope to capture that aesthetic and emotional range in the architecture we designed for the resort.