LoveDesignBuildRepeat
Dome villas on Cebu Island in Phillipinas
Location: Luyang, Carmen, Cebu, Philippines . GFA: 2,000 sqm
Architectural concept
On a brownfield site on the coast of Cebu — degraded land, the remnant of a coastal quarry that had stripped the mangrove fringe and left a compacted slope running down to the sea — our studio designed an eco-luxury resort of dome villas whose first purpose was not hospitality but regeneration. The brief was explicit: the resort must heal the site it sits on. The two thousand square metres hold a cluster of bamboo-framed dome — shelter units sheathed in hempcrete — arranged to restore the natural water flow of the slope, to replant the mangrove fringe, and to operate entirely off-grid. The architecture is, in the most literal sense, an ecological instrument. The luxury is its secondary product.
Spatial organisation
The domes are arranged in a loose cluster along the restored contour of the slope, each one oriented to the sea and the prevailing trade wind. The great dome — the social heart of the resort — sits at the highest point, holding the restaurant, the lounge, and the observation deck. The sleeping domes step down below, each one a self-contained unit with its sleeping platform, its bathing space, and its private terrace opening to the sea. The service wing — kitchen, water treatment, energy plant — is buried in the slope behind the great dome, invisible from the coast and from the guest terraces. The path between the domes follows the restored natural drainage, so that the rain, when it comes, flows as it did before the quarry.
Materials and climate
Bamboo dome structure
The palette is deliberately regenerative. Bamboo dome structure — the giant tropical bamboo, harvested from certified plantations on the neighbouring islands, carries the great curved frames of each dome, hewn and joined by Cebuano carpenters whose tradition in the material runs deep. Hempcrete sheathing — the hemp-lime composite, cast onto the bamboo frame in the great curved form, gives the domes their mass, their thermal performance, and their breathability. Hempcrete sequesters carbon (the hemp absorbs more than the lime emits), regulates humidity (it takes moisture in and gives it back), and insulates (the lime-hemp matrix holds air). Tropical-resist waterproofing — the membrane system engineered for the tropical monsoon, applied beneath the hempcrete's lime finish — protects the bamboo frame from the sustained moisture the climate delivers. The floors are local stone. The finishes are hemp render and natural oil. There is no concrete in the domes. There is no imported steel.
Style
The resort belongs to the Tropical Eco Luxury family — luxury as the absence of compromise with the ecology. The domes are not a stylistic choice; they are the most materially efficient way to enclose a tropical space, and the bamboo-hempcrete combination is the lowest-carbon way to build them. The eco-luxury reads in the craft: the Cebuano bamboo joinery, the hand-applied hempcrete, the carved-stone terraces, the quality of the natural light through the dome's oculus. There is no performed opulence. There is no imported finish. The luxury is in the silence of the off-grid operation, the temperature stability of the hempcrete mass, the restored mangrove at the water's edge, and the conscious eco-design approach the brief named — an architecture focused on what the site had lost, and on giving it back.
Bioclimatic strategy
The dome is the bioclimatic form. Its great curve sheds the monsoon rain, minimises the solar-exposed surface area for the volume enclosed, and — with its oculus — operates as a ventilation chimney, drawing cool air in at the terrace opening and exhausting warm air up through the crown. The hempcrete's thermal mass — significant, for a material of this weight — holds the night's cool into the day and the day's warmth into the night, moderating the diurnal swing. The deep terrace overhang shades the opening through the equatorial sun's arc. The restored mangrove, at the water's edge, cools the air that reaches the lower domes. Mechanical cooling runs as backup in the sleeping domes. The great dome, by design, has none.
Energy and sustainability
The resort is engineered to operate off-grid. A photovoltaic plant — sited on the service wing's flat canopy, sized to the resort's load — provides all electricity. Solar thermal provides hot water. Water recycling — the closed-loop system that treats greywater through reed beds and blackwater through a sealed biodigester — returns every drop to the landscape or the sea. Rainwater is harvested from the dome roofs and stored in stone cisterns. The brownfield site is being actively regenerated: the mangrove fringe, replanted in the first phase, is already re-establishing; the compacted slope, loosened and re-vegetated, is recovering its natural drainage. The hempcrete domes sequester more carbon than they emit. Over its life, the resort is carbon-negative.
Landscape
The landscape is the project's first deliverable, not its afterthought. The mangrove fringe, which the quarry had stripped, has been replanted and is monitored quarterly — three years in, it is a functioning ecosystem again, holding the coastline, nursing the juvenile fish, and cooling the air that reaches the lower domes. The slope between the great dome and the water has been re-graded to its natural contour and replanted with native tropical species — palm, frangipani, banana, the broad-leafed foliage that holds the hill. From the great dome's terrace at dawn, the sea holds the early light, the mangrove is a low green band at the water's edge, and the resort — bamboo, hempcrete, stone — reads as a piece of the regenerated landscape, which is what it was designed to be.
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