ARCHITECTURE / INTERIOR DESIGN

Kerry Hill Architects

On the site of what was reputed to be the favourite vacation spot of the notorious Nationalist leader of China between 1887–1975, Chang Kai-Shek, the Lalu has been updated to truly international luxury standards while retaining its ties with tradition and local custom.

Mixing different traditional Asian architectural vocabularies with modern construction methods, the Lalu provides a contemporary Taiwanese masterpiece of contemplative architecture. Influenced by the built tradition of the Lalu tribe, the area’s aboriginal people, award-winning Kerry Hill architects used stacked slate/granite, large slabs of stone and crafted timber.

Simple volumes are multiplied both inside and out to give a complex interplay of containment and space. The peaceful scene of Sun Moon Lake, named for its shape that combines the outlines of the round sun and the crescent moon, provides an interesting contrast to the bamboo valley in the vicinity. Intimacy of the panelled rooms is created well with fireplaces and simple, though elegant and deeply comfortable, furniture. Accents such as moon-shaped gates or locally sourced urns and other smaller tokens of local chic further anchor the hotel in its tradition, making it worthy of its historical reputation and new status.

In the hotel’s seven private villas, each with its own swimming pool, architectural motifs are repeated. This attention to consistency unites interior and exterior, just as the hotel’s mix of modernism and tradition is integrated into its environment.