SPA & WELLNESS NEW CONSTRUCTION
Siem Reap, Cambodia, 2018/on going
Principal: Andrea Di Stefano | Collaborator: Salvo Pappalardo
Amrita
A paradigm for sensitive riverside development in Siem Reap, Amrita serves as a house for trees, preserving ancient Maparang Fruit Trees dating to the city’s founding. Its architecture emerges from ecological necessity, safeguarding the water cycle, root systems, and vital mycorrhizal networks in the undisturbed soil.
The Forest as Inhabitant
The conserved Maparang trees sustain natural cycles: squirrels feeding on their fruit disperse seeds of the Buddha tree (Ficus religiosa). These take root as epiphytes on Maparang trunks, embodying the Angkor forest’s perpetual cycle of growth and decay.
Structural Novelty
Rejecting excavation, the structure touches the ground lightly via a Voronoi diagram of above-ground beams—paths equidistant from trunks—forming a rigid mat. This supports tensile ribs and compression rings cradling each tree. Ultra-slender columns ascend as pure vertical props to a suspended, perforated deck, while a perimeter shear wall manages lateral forces, leaving the interior open and dominated by the forest.
A Reflection on the Canopy
The roof inverts this logic: cantilevering slabs create shallow ponds that treat and store rainwater, channeling it back to the trees. These reflective surfaces capture the canopy, dissolving distinctions between above and below and evoking Cambodian traditions of ponds as connectors between subterranean and celestial realms—echoing myths of land emerging from water.
Building Impermanency
Amrita, a vessel for the forest’s life, embraces transience. Like Angkor’s reclaimed temples, it dialogues between perennial nature and human temporality. Its architectural form finds spiritual resonance in the reflective pools, acknowledging the Angkor forest’s ultimate dominion.
