Laku Beach Club Recasts a Phuket Villa as a Lively Sea Bar Retreat
Laku Beach Club transforms a former vacation house on Coconut Island in Phuket, Thailand into a spirited bar and nightclub by Studio Locomotive. The project draws on the songs, rituals, and resourceful building culture of local sea people, translating that heritage into rich materials and crafted interiors. Guests move between poolside terraces and layered rooms where natural hues, tactile surfaces, and indigenous references set a vivid yet grounded coastal mood.
Palm fronds frame a timber roofline as guests step off the island path toward the water. From the pool, the bar’s open rooms glow in the late light, their green tiles, terrazzo swirls, and woven chairs catching every shift in the sky.
Inside this reimagined bar and nightclub on Coconut Island in Phuket, Thailand, Studio Locomotive works from memory and rhythm. The team converts a former vacation house into Laku Beach Club, drawing from the songs and ceremonies of sea people along the Andaman coast. Interior choices lean into raw assembly, handcrafted furniture, and a spectrum of natural hues that keep the building close to its maritime context.
The project uses the existing villa structure as a framework, then layers new rooms for gathering, dining, and drinking across two levels. Guests read the story through surfaces and objects rather than signage or spectacle. Interior composition turns ritual into pattern, with every weave, tile, and carved form echoing seafaring life and respect for nature.
Reading The Arrival
Approach begins at the pool terrace where low timber loungers and planters soften the edge between deck and lagoon. The upper level’s deep eaves and exposed rafters cast striped shadows, setting a calm foreground for the water beyond. Sliding openings dissolve the wall line so the bar reads as a shaded veranda, and timber columns carry the eye upward to the gently curved roof.
At this threshold, color stays restrained. Warm wood, muted planting, and the blue of the pool register first, preparing visitors for the richer interior palette just beyond the glass.
Patterns Of The Sea
On the upper level lounge, terrazzo floors hold sweeping inlays that trace wave-like forms across the room. Round globe pendants hang from dark beams, their steady rhythm echoing the floor’s movement while leaving clear sightlines to the water. Built-in banquettes wrap the perimeter with patterned cushions in deep greens and ochres, giving the long room a continuous, low horizon.
Artworks and sculpted vessels rest on dark timber tables, introducing figurative references without crowding the volume. Every piece stays tactile—smooth stone, rough ceramic, woven fiber—that keeps the story of sea rituals grounded in handwork rather than themed decor.
Dining In Warm Timber
Downstairs, the dining room leans into an intimate scale. A timber ceiling with closely spaced boards drops the height, while patterned floor tiles lay out a gentle graphic grid underfoot. Woven armchairs gather around stout wooden tables, their pale fiber contrasting with the surrounding joinery in a measured way.
Windows run the length of one wall as angled louvers, bringing in breeze and broken daylight. Built-in cabinetry and tiled surfaces frame art and planting so the room reads as both restaurant and living room, fit for lingering through slow meals.
Terrace Rhythm And Bar
Outside, a shaded terrace extends the club back toward the garden. Slender timber slats form a canopy with shifting bands of sun and shade, giving the seating a gently animated ceiling. A curved bar wrapped in vertical elements stands like a drum at one end, reinforcing the project’s musical references in built form.
Low sofas in orange and teal hug the terrace edge, piled with pillows that pick up motifs from inside. Guests cluster around small tables, with planting tucked between seats and columns so every group sits near leaves, light, and the soft sound of the sea.
As evening settles, the building reads as a warm lantern above the pool. Interior colors deepen, and the rhythm of tiles, textiles, and timber carries outward into the dark. Laku Beach Club holds that balance between coastal air and crafted interior, giving the former house a new life tuned to the island’s nightly tide of gathering and song.
Photography courtesy of Studio Locomotive
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