International architecture practice Arch(e)type has completed the concept design for Ayni, a resort hotel on a 33,500 m² hilltop site in the north of Koh Phangan, in the Gulf of Thailand, away from the island's tourist centres. From the top of the hill there are views of the sea and the mountains, and this seclusion shaped the entire layout.

The masterplan has two connected parts. Villas sit in concentric rings around a circular pavilion the architects call the Sacred Center, while the public, sports and recreational programme and some of the accommodation run in a straight line beside them. The reference is Wat Ratchabophit in Bangkok  where a round, bell-shaped stupa (chedi) holds the middle of the compound, with the rectangular ordination hall (ubosot) and assembly hall (viharn) on either side. Arch(e)type took that pairing of a ring and orthogonal volumes and laid it across a slope.

The villas form two concentric rings separated by a single access road, which gives every house a view of its own that it shares with no one. In the inner ring, the living areas of the villas open onto a sheltered communal garden, the green core of the settlement. The outer ring turns its living rooms and terraces towards the landscape around it: the mountains, the sea and the forest. In both rings the bedrooms sit on the road side. All the main rooms face the landscape, cars never cross into private space, and the two rings stay out of each other's sight.

The circle was chosen because it has no hierarchy and no corners to compete for. The 236 m² timber pavilion holds a library, a yoga and coaching room, a meeting room and a lounge around an open core with a single tree at its centre. It is designed together with its garden, which follows the Wheel of Dharma: each zone corresponds to one element of the Noble Eightfold Path and is given a programme to match. A walk through the garden becomes a sequence of contemplation, discipline, ethical conduct and wisdom.

The linear zone runs strictly from west to east, which the architects see as a passage from Western to Eastern culture, from the everyday towards the contemplative. One promenade links the accommodation, a restaurant with a pool terrace cut into the hillside, a spa and a sports centre that starts with a tennis hall and ends with a Muay Thai gym. Each building along the route has two courtyards, an outer one open to the shared landscape and an inner one kept private.

The villas take their cue from Thailand's white stone temples. Facade panels are cast with an uneven texture modelled on weathered limestone. The pattern looks differently depending on where a building stands on the slope and how the sun and clouds pass over it. From the road below, the villas step down the hill in terraces and resemble rock outcrops the jungle has grown around.

"We wanted every villa to have its own view, even though the site is fairly dense. The answer was two rings. The outer ring looks out to the sea, the mountains and the jungle, while the inner ring, where the plots are smaller, faces a sacred garden we laid out at the centre. Life in each villa unfolds either outward, towards the landscape, or inward, towards the garden, with the road and the service side of the house kept behind.

Guests are never disturbed by housekeeping or neighbours. Our starting point was that everyone recharges differently: some draw energy from the mountains, others from the water or the wild greenery of the hillside, and others from yoga and meditation. Yoga became the central theme of Ayni. The circle gave every villa its own view and every guest their own way to recharge," says Daria Belyakova, founder of Arch(e)type.