Words MOD Studio
Editing The Kanto team
Images Greg Mayo
Solace Events Hotel and Villas sits on a flat stretch of De Fuego Road in General Trias, Cavite, with none of a typical resort brief’s usual advantages. No ridge framed a view, nor did a stand of old trees offer a place to build beneath. The brief asked for two things in real tension with each other: a private escape and a space substantial enough to gather and celebrate in. We had to set the “scene,” so to speak, building a spatial narrative from the ground up with climate-responsive spaces and lush landscaping to give the 5,000-square-meter property a sense of place.
The master plan turns its back on the road and the surrounding subdivisions, arranging the buildings around a chain of courtyards, pools, gardens, and open lawns. Walk from one end of the property to the other, and the view changes at every turn: a pool gives way to a garden, a garden opens onto a lawn, and each path leads to its own “framed” scene, ensuring no vantage point repeats the last.
“We had to set the “scene,” so to speak, building a spatial narrative from the ground up with climate-responsive spaces and lush landscaping to give the 5,000-square-meter property a sense of place.”
Our resort buildings hung low and horizontal, finished in restrained materials under deep roof overhangs. Breeze-block screens filter the sun and let air move freely through, keeping the walls permeable. The copious planting does as much of the shading as the roofs do. The architecture’s crisp, rectilinear volumes frame staged tropical tableaus and green views while its porosity ensures optimum responsiveness to the climate.
At the center of the property, the events pavilion and the main pool sit side by side, framed by water, garden, and open sky; they form the communal core around which every other part of the resort is built. The villas sit further out, at the property’s quieter edges, close enough to the gardens to feel part of them but sequestered for guests looking for some quiet over company. The same grounds can hold a wedding one weekend and a family staying for two nights the next, each with ample room of its own.
Landscape carried more of the design than usual for a boutique resort development. With no natural features to favor on site, we decided to build them: layered greenery, reflective water, and courtyards that encourage both self-reflection and gathering, standing witness to how the planting will mature over the years ahead. The greenery we’ve planted now will only look more convincing in the coming years, as the shrubs and trees have time to grow into the spaces we left for them.
This tack isn’t the first time we’ve done so for a project. On an earlier residential assignment in Cavite, we shaped a rest house’s pool to mimic the beach a pair of clients had left behind in Palawan, right on a site nowhere near an ocean. Solace extends this approach: when a place doesn’t give you what a project needs, you build it yourself and let it take on a life of its own.
But what’s the point of building a destination if no one can reach it?
The Governor’s Drive interchange, which opened this May just past the property’s rear boundary, cuts the drive from Metro Manila and the rest of Southern Luzon considerably, giving guests looking to escape the city a real way to reach the destination. Even so, the resort itself doesn’t feel any closer to the city it’s giving solace from. •
Project Team
Completion year: 2026
Lot area: 5,000 sq.m
Floor area: approx. 2,000 sq.m
Location: General Trias, Cavite, Philippines
Program: Boutique hospitality development
Project Team: MOD Studio: Mark William R. Odion (Design Principal),
Maria Katrina P. Odion, Sabrina A. Tan, Helena Isabel Z. De Villa
Plumbing fixtures: Kuysen
Automatic gate: Doortech
Outdoor furniture: Design Story and Casa Selma
Furniture: Casa Selma and Ito Kish
Lighting: GGI
Bed: Taylor Living
Accessories: Kenneth Cobonpue
Lobby sculpture: Industria
Doors: Matimco
Wood ceiling: Reycor and Matimco
Pool: Aquapools
Glass: Metrocor, Inc.
