RAAS Chhatrasagar, a 16-key eco-hotel in Rajasthan designed by New Delhi-based multidisciplinary architecture and design practise Studio Lotus, has been honoured with the ‘Best Hotel & Leisure building’ at the World Architecture Festival Awards (WAF) 2021, the only building from India to have made the cut. The World Architecture Festival is the largest international celebration of buildings and landscapes that brings in architects and designers from all over the globe. The 2021 edition (31st year running) of the festival was held virtually where all shortlisted architects competed in front of a live judging panel and an audience of their peers.
The project showcases a camp-like design vocabulary that borrows from regional influences and reinterpretation of indigenous craft forms. The site for the project—a remote village teeming with native and migratory birdlife—presented to the architects the challenge of being part of a fragile ecosystem. Therefore, the team at Studio Lotus explored the possibilities offered by modular construction, a unique system in which building components are manufactured in an off-site location (a factory or workshop) and transported to the construction site for assembly.
“Building in such areas comes with a huge responsibility, where reckless development over the years has caused unprecedented damage to fragile ecosystems—areas that support local communities and livelihoods and often carry a wealth of sustainable ways of being. At Studio Lotus, we have always focused on minimizing the impact of our building practices on the environment while delivering maximum impact to our clients’ lives and well-being,” says Ambrish Arora, one of the co-founders of the practice and the project’s lead designer.
RAAS Chhatrasagar is a luxury wildlife camping destination perched atop a century-old check dam on the banks of the Chhatrasagar Lake, in Nimaj, in Rajasthan’s Pali district (between the cities of Jaipur and Jodhpur). It reimagines the erstwhile temporary tourist camps set up by its owners Harshvardhan and Nandivardhan Rathore, great-grandsons of Thakur Chhatra Singh of Nimaj.
