Dreaming La Pari Pari

Some of you have asked us, naturally, what La Pari Pari will be like.  Rustic?  Tropical? Modern?

Today we came one step closer to determining the answer.  After many months of discussions and visioning, talking things over and bouncing ideas off walls and ceilings and floors, the design brief for La Pari Pari has finally been completed.

So we do have an idea of what we're after.  But what eventually emerges is something that we are leaving open to our architect to explore, and we hope, pleasantly surprise us.

In the meantime, just to get a taste of the visions we hve in our head, here are two resorts we love.

La Banane is a stylish little resort (it only has nine rooms) on the island of St Bart's.  

A long distance away from Langkawi but close to our hearts as a source of inspiration for the intimate and very accessible feel we want to achieve with La Pari Pari.  

La Banane is modern yet not ultra hip in the way some design-oriented properties are - you know the kind, all metal and glass and concrete and cold.  It's somewhere you can feel comfortable lounging around in your shorts or in your swimmies by the pool, yet it still feels more luxurious than home because let's face it, who wants to go on a vacation only to feel like they're still in their own backyard.

Plus, seeing that La Banane is a well patronised location even though it isn't beachfront, we think it is a great benchmark for La Pari Pari which will also be a short walk away from sea and surf.

The only thing we would add for consideration in designing La Pari Pari is our inclination to ensure some element of local context is added to the design.  But not in that "kampung house knock-off" kind of way.  Something a lot more subtle - a swash of colour or texture, an ornament, even images on walls perhaps.

Hotel Azucar

As contrast, there's also Hotel Azucar on the coast of Veracruz, Mexico.  This twenty-room resort is all about quirky charm - something that ensures it will sustain its uniqueness for years to come.

It sits within its environment comfortably, a reflection and tribute to the sugar trade that has framed the history of its locale.  It's the heart behind its design intent that we admire - how its soul is expressed in the place and use of local materials, even driftwood!

So there you have it - a sneak peek into the images that have been floating around in our heads for over a year now.

With a visit from the creative muses and some small ingenuity, hopefully La Pari Pari will measure up to these two places we love, but of course in its own individually unique Malaysian way.

Isn't this all so exciting?