PAVA architects Builds a Reclaimed-Timber Village of Courtyard Rooms beside the Mekong in Chiang Khan

Chiang Khan has become one of northeastern Thailand's busiest riverside escapes, a town where the slow pace of the Mekong now meets weekend crowds and a growing hotel market. PAVA architects, led by Pacharapan Ratananakorn and Varat Limwibul, responds with Nachan the Antique Courtyard Hotel. The 1,200 m² hotel avoids a single block and breaks into a cluster of small timber pavilions set at the edge of town, between the forest and the river.

The interesting part is not the rustic look, which is easy to fake. It is the way the building is put together. The pavilions are built from solid timber salvaged from old houses, abandoned warehouses and rice mills. A reinforced concrete core hides the bathrooms and services and also stiffens the timber frame. The rooms sit around triangular courtyards placed between existing trees. We read the project as a deliberate argument that a hotel can be small, repairable and rooted in regional craft while still delivering the comfort guests now expect.

A Village Cluster on the Mekong Edge

From above, the scheme reads as a hamlet more than a hotel. Grey-shingled roofs gather around a brick path, a lawn and a small pond, with the wide river just beyond. The scale is the key decision. Each pavilion is small enough to sit under the canopy, so the hotel never presents a long facade to the river or the street.

The architects describe the project as a transition between the fast-moving town and the calm of the Mekong, and the site plan makes that literal. You walk from the forest parking area through planted ground and water before reaching the rooms. Reflections in the pond do the work a lobby atrium would do elsewhere: they slow you down.

Pavilions Planted Around Existing Trees

The buildings were positioned around the trees already on site, and you can feel it in the irregular spacing. Pitched roofs push up through foliage, and the ground between them stays as meadow, including a patch of cosmos flowers that does more for the sense of place than any amount of decorative landscaping would.

Arranging guest rooms around triangular courtyards is a smart answer to a common problem in clustered resorts, where neighbours end up looking straight into each other's rooms. Angling the units so their main openings face away from one another gives each room privacy without high walls. The two-storey pavilions read as individual houses, which suits a town known for its old timber shophouses.

Reclaimed Timber and a Skin That Breathes

The facades are a kit of vertical boards, louvred shutters and fixed louvred panels. Glazing is used only where a view earns it. Everything else filters light and air, which makes sense in a climate of heavy rain and strong sun. Closed, the shutters shade the room. Opened, they turn the wall into a ventilation device.

Because the timber is reclaimed from local houses, warehouses and rice mills, the material already carries decades of weathering, and it is left to keep ageing. PAVA worked with local craftspeople to test tropical timber species and joinery, and that collaboration is visible in the shutter frames. They are carpentry, not product catalogue items.

Cantilevers, Rafters and a Hidden Concrete Core

The structural logic is the most rigorous part of the project. The timber bays and spans are tuned so that floors can cantilever. This balances the frame and keeps beam depths down, an important point when you are working with salvaged sections of fixed size. Exposed rafters and a heavy edge beam at the gable show the structure openly.

Hidden inside each pavilion, the reinforced concrete core holds the bathroom and services. It solves three problems at once. It braces the timber frame, it keeps wet zones away from wood, and it puts plumbing in one place where it is easy to reach for repairs. The view of the open frame during construction shows how little the timber has to do once the core takes over the lateral work.

Rooms That Open to the Garden

Inside, the palette stays restrained: a bed beside floor-to-ceiling glass, curtains in earthy browns and olive accents, and the garden as the main event. The ground-floor rooms are less about interior design than about framing a few metres of planting at close range.

The freestanding bathtub facing the timber veranda shows the hotel's hospitality instinct. Bathing is pushed toward the edge and the light, while the toilet and shower stay tucked into the concrete core. It is a familiar resort gesture, but here it follows directly from the plan rather than being added on.

Balconies and Thresholds

The cantilevered floors produce deep balconies and sheltered terraces, so every room gets an in-between zone: shaded, rain-protected and open to the breeze. Concrete terraces at ground level and slatted timber railings above make these thresholds feel like extensions of the room rather than optional extras.

Bougainvillea is already climbing over the upper balconies. Given a few seasons, the planting will soften the timber edges further, and the hotel will sink even more into its garden. That seems to be the intention.

Plans and Drawings

The site plan and exploded axonometric explain the strategy in a glance. Small buildings are scattered among dense canopy, paths wind between them, and a pond sits at the centre of a productive landscape master plan. The axonometric separates the timber roof frames from the concrete structure, which clarifies how the two systems divide the work.

The room plans place the bathroom core at the heart of each unit, with sleeping spaces and the freestanding tub arranged around it and an external stair leading to the upper level. Placing the core at the centre leaves the perimeter free for openings on every side.

Elevations and sections show the balconies running along both sides, louvred central panels and the diagonal exterior stair. The building sits on concrete footings that lift the timber clear of the ground, a detail that matters in a region of monsoon rain.

The wall sections are the most instructive drawings in the set. Shingles, rafters, purlins, columns and the balcony railing are all drawn as a single assembly, and a reinforced concrete floor rests on a single footing. They read like a builder's manual, which fits a project meant to pass craft knowledge on.

Why This Project Matters

Southeast Asian resort design often treats vernacular as decoration: a pitched roof here, some rattan there, all over a conventional concrete frame. Nachan reverses that. Reclaimed timber, handmade brick and earth plaster mixed from site soil and native grass are the building, not a costume. The concrete appears only where it performs best, in the wet core. That honest division of materials is the lesson worth taking away.

The project also shows how a hotel can carry knowledge forward. By developing timber species, joinery and earth plaster with local craftspeople, PAVA architects keeps alive skills that would otherwise vanish with the old rice mills the wood came from. For a riverside town under growing tourist pressure, a small, repairable and tree-respecting model like this is a better precedent than another large block facing the Mekong.

Nachan the Antique Courtyard Hotel by PAVA architects (lead architects Pacharapan Ratananakorn and Varat Limwibul), Chiang Khan, Loei, Thailand. Area: 1,200 m². Completed: 2025. Photography: Spaceshift Studio.

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