The brief called for the historical hotel site of St Francis Bay, that has stood unutilized with the demolished remains of the previous 1960’s hotel for several years, to be re-developed into a 71 roomed hotel. A sectional-title townhouse development, with the advantage of optional rental pooling back into the hotel, would provide the urban framework of which the hotel would be the focus.  The development was to be realised Within the St Francis Bay idiom of black thatch roofs and white walls, while responding to the urban scale of the greater St Francis Bay community.

Generally there are two parts to the site.  The first a magnificent rectangular property with sand dune and beach frontage, long north aspect alongside a protected indigenous green space with a sharply banked indigenous south edge.  Secondly an inner village type area integrally linked to the surrounding village.  The conceptional solution of placing the require accommodation on the site was guided by these inherent characteristics.  

Thus the design concept of a series of scaled building blocks around two major court areas, the wind protected inner “ village square “ court and the greater modern “ werf “ defined by townhouses as “ out-buildings “ to the hotel as the “ homestead “.  These townhouses were strung out along the north edge for all room to be north facing and carpture the views.

The urban design planning of parking, car access and movement opens up axial views to the natural features of the site – beach and sea, inland mountains and immediate indigenous bush.  The main entrance to the site, initially defined at the gate house with an enclosed existing tree court ( becomes an avenue access to the main hotel facility ).

Townhouse accommodation become either simplex garden units or duplex loft apartments where the natural characteristics of 45° pitched required by thatch were exploited to provide accommodation for the main bedrooms with formally resolved en-suite bathroom within this loft space.  Spacious terraces resolve the anomally of the required internal dimensions for apartment accommodation with constraint to thatch as roof.  These “ out buildings “ became a contrast of formal placement to one another with partition walls providing definition and scale to each building,, to the playful availability of thatch extending over the communal corridor and staircases.