MOLJOKS PAVILION AND COTTAGES

Saspol, a village in Ladakh, is located along an ancient trade route, with petroglyphs scattered across the valley that tell tales of the  past. Moljoks family’s ancestral house, perched on a cliff edge above a glacial stream meeting the Indus river, was recently restored  for the family’s hospitality business. The restoration was carefully handled by conservation architect John Harrison. The family  sought to expand the property with a restaurant and a couple of cottages to enhance its potential.   

The land is narrow but well-connected, with fruit orchards to the South-East, a village to the West across the stream, and  stunning views of the Indus river to the South-West. To the North-West, the property is overlooked by ancient meditation caves  and a historic fortress.  

The design of the Restaurant Pavilion draws inspiration from royal courts and pavilions, aiming to extend the Moljoks Heritage for  leisure, while multiplying as a museum for the family’s heirloom heritage. Hidden within the fruit orchard, two identical cottages  rise from the meadow, accessed by separate mulch pathways. These cottages, designed as lantern-like structures, pay homage to  the ancient trade route.  

With profound observation, the vernacular would reflect the potential of life and the evolution of culture in that place.   Deconstructing those observations, it would reveal the pattern of potential evolutions, past, future and a whole.   

The ancillary functions to the restaurant are wrapped along the main house, designed in a humble Ladakhi style. The restaurant  pavilion itself, being visually close to the Ladakhi architecture, is far from that. The restaurant hosts up to 50 covers with  experiences like, formal dining, cantilever deck, casual bar and bonfire. While offering a panoramic view, the layout of the pavilion is  composed of four identical squares arranged about a plus-shaped nave with a clerestory above it. The modularity of the layout and  the experience of the structural design are both progressive and unique within the context. The pavilion has an unusual drama of  natural light combined with the rhythmic alignment of structural elements. Supporting the roof, Poplar beams and rafters are  arranged diagonally, creating a strikingly unusual and cohesive structural framework, almost like a woven fabric. Timberwork  inspired by the mannerisms of wabi-sabi along with a water stream flowing through the pavilion for a sensory depth, create the  serene ambiance.  

The tall trapezoid frame of the Poplar trunks, of the stand-alone cottages, leans inwards and integrate with the walls to stabilize  them at the plinth, roof, railing and the terrace canopy levels. The private room has a uniaxial layout of a centrally placed bed and a  study table facing the opening to the patio. The external Poplar stairs, as if it was a tree house, leads straight to the sun terrace  above, from the privacy of the room. The terrace transforms into a private star-gazing deck in the night.  

Moljoks Heritage and Pavilion stands as a beacon of preservation of the progressive nature of Ladakhi traditions that are often  disregarded owing to the demands of short-sighted tourism industry.