Location: Chiang Khan, Thailand

Design Team: PAVA architects

Lead Architects: Pacharapan Ratananakorn, Varat Limwibul

Area: 1,200 m²

Year: 2025

Photography: Spaceshift Studio

Design Features: Nachan the Antique Courtyard Hotel stands in Chiang Khan, northeastern Thailand, near the Mekong River. Rather than concentrating its 1,200 square metres in a single resort building, PAVA architects breaks the programme into intimate timber units arranged around a series of triangular courtyards. The resulting cluster reads as a small village, forming a gradual transition between an urban pace of life and the stillness of the river landscape.

The masterplan begins with the site's mature trees. Tamarinds form a landscape backdrop, rain trees stand as natural sculptures within the courtyards, and a pair of mango trees marks the arrival space. A reduced building footprint leaves more ground available for infiltration, ponds and continuous planting. Room orientation coordinates shade, daylight, ventilation and privacy, turning each courtyard into both a social setting and part of the microclimate strategy.

Reclaimed solid timber from old houses, abandoned warehouses and local rice mills provides the principal construction material. It is joined by handmade brick and earth plaster mixed on site with native grass fibres. Working with local craftspeople, the architects studied tropical timber species, joints and patterns of weathering. Knots, grain, cracks and tonal variation are treated not as defects but as records of time, use and material recovery.

In response to the tropical climate of northeastern Thailand, the timber frame is calibrated through efficient bays and spans, cantilevered floors, deep roofs, balconies and louvers. These elements temper heavy rain and intense sun while maintaining air movement. Building services and bathrooms are consolidated within concealed reinforced-concrete cores, subtly strengthening the timber structures and making maintenance more direct and affordable.

Guest rooms retain the presence of the timber frame and earthen surfaces, allowing warm materials, garden views and breezes from the Mekong landscape to slow the rhythm of occupation. Farm-to-table production and artisan workshops are also integrated into the wider productive landscape. The hotel is therefore not conceived as complete on opening day: weathering timber, growing vegetation and seasonal change continue to make the architecture over time.

Design Team: PAVA architects was founded in Bangkok in 2018 by Pacharapan Ratananakorn and Varat Limwibul as an interdisciplinary environmental design practice. Ratananakorn studied interior architecture at Chulalongkorn University and urban design at ETH Zurich, and previously worked with Architectkidd. Limwibul studied architecture at Chulalongkorn University and landscape architecture at Harvard GSD, with earlier experience at Architects 49 in Bangkok and BIG in New York.

The studio treats architecture, interiors, landscape and urbanism as connected environmental systems. Under the continuing idea of 'Reviving in Progress', its work responds to climatic challenges, environmental degradation and urbanisation through research across disciplinary boundaries. Time, place and context matter alongside less visible economic, cultural, political and ecological forces, allowing design to recover memory while supporting future use and community agency.

The practice is jointly led by its founders, with an official team that includes Sapanya Patrathiranond, Woraya Chaiprasert, Chanapat Janwong, Napatsawan Thummaratpaisan and Naruporn Binsanthia. Kaomai Museum and Tea Barn won the World Architecture Festival's Creative Reuse category in 2023. Nachan received the 2026 Architizer A+Awards Jury Award for Sustainable Hospitality Building and a Merit Award in the ASA Excellent Architecture Awards.