Here Comes The Sun: A Musical Retreat That Folds Montserrat's Terrain Into a Public Green Roof

Most retreats are designed to keep the world out. Here Comes The Sun does the opposite. It proposes a musical retreat on Montserrat where touring performers, local residents, students and visitors share the same ground, and that ground is the building itself. The roof becomes a public landscape, the studios open toward the sea, and music works as the common language that architecture is asked to make audible again on an island whose cultural life was disrupted by the Soufrière Hills volcanic eruption.

Designed by Rashi Desadla and Kritik Kapoor, the project was a shortlisted entry in Tropical House 2020. Rather than producing an isolated resort or a conventional performance venue, the designers combine public space, music education, recording facilities, accommodation, cultural programming and landscaped recreation within one continuous composition. They treat the eruption, and the displacement and migration that followed, as the starting point. The brief they set themselves is recovery: a place of return where weakened social networks and the island's link to international cultural exchange might be rebuilt.

A Building Drawn From the Contour Lines

The aerial view at dusk shows the project's central move. A curving two-storey mass follows the site's existing contours instead of sitting on them as an autonomous object. The designers' early diagrams begin with a simple block laid along the terrain and then progressively bend it into a fluid, multi-level form. Curved edges, ramps, terraces and planted surfaces carry the ground plane up and over the architecture, so the building keeps a low profile and reads as much as landscape as construction. A rooftop pool and terraced seating confirm that the roof is meant to be occupied, not merely seen.

The plaza rendering explains why this matters socially. Beneath the sloping green roof, stepped seating, café umbrellas, strung flags and kites set the scene for informal gathering and festivals. The roof's edge works as an amphitheatre and a public park at once, a threshold anyone can climb without a ticket. This is where the project's broader definition of sustainability becomes concrete. Planted roofs and a light touch on the topography matter, but the larger claim is that long-term resilience also depends on giving a community a place to meet. The tiered section supports this, placing public areas, performance spaces and retreat accommodation on different levels so that activities with competing needs for privacy, acoustics and access can coexist in one system.

Performance Rooms That Face the Horizon

Inside, the designers choose exposure over enclosure. The glazed performance room, with its drum kit, grand piano, guitars and microphone stands, faces a sunset over the sea, so rehearsal happens against the landscape rather than in a sealed black box. It is a deliberate statement about what a Caribbean music space should feel like: rooted in place, with the island's light and horizon present in every session.

The auditorium waiting area carries the same logic into the in-between spaces. Grey sofas, framed band posters and a patterned wall give the lounge a domestic, lived-in character, while the glazing opens fully to the seascape. Foyers are often treated as leftover circulation. Here they become social rooms where audiences and artists can linger, which fits a programme built on chance encounters between visiting performers and local residents.

A Recording Studio With a Window on the Ocean

The control room is the most technically demanding space in the programme, and the rendering shows how the designers tackle it. A mixing console and monitors face a herringbone timber wall that gives the room warmth and a tactile surface, while a glass corner frames the ocean and passing birds. Recording studios usually turn inward to protect acoustic control; this one keeps a measured opening to the outside, preserving the retreat's link to its setting even in its most specialised room.

Placing professional recording facilities alongside music education and public space is what separates the proposal from a holiday venue. It suggests a working cultural institution where internationally recognised artists might record within reach of students and residents, and where the island could once again be a destination for musical production rather than only a backdrop.

Why This Project Matters

Here Comes The Sun reframes the tropical house brief at a civic scale. Desadla and Kapoor take a familiar architectural device, the landscaped roof, and give it a social purpose: it serves as plaza, amphitheatre and park for a community whose networks were strained by disaster and migration. The building's form comes from the terrain, and its programme comes from the island's history, so the two read as one argument rather than as separate layers.

The project also shows that post-disaster architecture need not be defensive or mournful. Its title signals optimism, and the design follows through with spaces built for performance, learning, festivals and rest. Some questions remain open, such as how climate, acoustics and the open glazing would be reconciled in detail. Even so, the proposal makes a persuasive case that cultural infrastructure, carefully set into the landscape, can be part of how a place rebuilds itself.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Rashi Desadla, Kritik Kapoor

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Project credits: Here Comes The Sun by Rashi Desadla, Kritik Kapoor Tropical House 2020 (uni.xyz).