Kerry Hill AO

Editorial note

Kerry Hill’s LHL significance lies in a body of architecture that helped define contemporary tropical and resort luxury in Asia and the Indian Ocean. Australian-born and Singapore-based for most of his mature career, he founded Kerry Hill Architects in 1979 and developed an architectural language grounded in climate, landscape, material restraint, courtyards, water and the reinterpretation of local building traditions. His long association with Aman placed him alongside Ed Tuttle and Jean-Michel Gathy among the formative designers of the brand, but Hill’s authorship extends far beyond Aman through projects such as The Datai Langkawi, The Lalu, Amankora and COMO The Treasury. Attribution remains project-specific and collaborative: owners, operators, local architects, landscape designers and other consultants retain distinct roles.

1 · 1943 — Perth

Kerry Hill was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1943. His later architecture would become deeply associated with Asia, but his formation began in the light, climate and material culture of Australia.

2 · Architectural education

Hill studied architecture in Perth, including at Perth Technical College and the University of Western Australia, before beginning a career that quickly moved beyond Australia.

3 · 1960s — Leave Australia

In the late 1960s Hill moved to Hong Kong to work with Palmer & Turner. The move began a lifelong engagement with Asian cities, climates and building traditions.

4 · Bali

Work in Bali became especially formative. Hill encountered vernacular compounds, pavilions, courtyards, walls, shaded transitions and a landscape culture in which architecture and garden were difficult to separate.

5 · Do not import the international hotel

The emerging lesson was the opposite of generic international modernism: a hotel in Asia should not look as though it had been transported intact from Europe or America.

6 · 1979 — Kerry Hill Architects

Hill established Kerry Hill Architects in Singapore in 1979. Singapore remained the practice’s principal base and placed the studio inside the rapid transformation of Asian hospitality.

7 · Singapore as platform

From Singapore, Hill could work across Southeast Asia while observing modernisation at close range. The city became both professional base and testing ground for contemporary tropical architecture.

8 · Climate before style

Hill’s architecture begins with climate: shade, breeze, rain, sun, water and the movement between inside and outside. Style follows environmental response rather than preceding it.

9 · The wall

Walls in Hill’s work often create privacy, frame views and establish calm. They are not simply boundaries; they organise emotional distance from the outside world.

10 · The courtyard

Courtyards allow light, air, water and landscape to enter the architecture while preserving enclosure. They become one of the most durable devices in his hospitality vocabulary.

11 · The pavilion

The pavilion breaks a resort into smaller pieces and allows the guest to move through landscape rather than remain inside one large hotel mass.

12 · The roof

Deep roofs and overhangs respond to tropical sun and rain while giving buildings a strong horizontal presence. Environmental logic becomes architectural character.

13 · Water

Pools and reflecting surfaces cool, extend views and intensify stillness. In Hill’s work water often appears quieter and more geometrically controlled than in the theatrical resort architecture of later designers.

14 · Material restraint

Stone, timber, plaster, concrete and local craft are used with discipline. Luxury emerges from proportion, texture and construction rather than decorative accumulation.

15 · Modernism + vernacular

Hill’s architecture is neither historical imitation nor abstract international modernism. Its strength lies in allowing modern geometry to absorb lessons from vernacular building traditions.

16 · Adrian Zecha

Adrian Zecha became one of Hill’s defining hospitality collaborators. Aman’s emphasis on privacy, place, low density and understated service aligned closely with Hill’s architectural instincts.

17 · The Aman circle

Jean-Michel Gathy later described himself, Ed Tuttle and Kerry Hill as the early Aman 'three musketeers'. The phrase captures a formative design circle rather than a single unified style.

18 · Different hands, shared values

Tuttle, Hill and Gathy produced distinct architecture. What connected them was a willingness to let Aman properties differ dramatically by destination while sharing deeper ideas of privacy, calm and place.

19 · Amanusa

Amanusa in Bali became one of Hill’s defining Aman projects, translating Balinese spatial principles into a restrained contemporary resort language.

20 · Bali without theme park

The objective was not to reproduce a traditional village as scenery. Local building memory informed proportion, roof, courtyard and landscape without turning the resort into theatrical ethnography.

21 · Amankila

Amankila on Bali’s east coast became one of Hill’s most celebrated resorts. Its architecture descends through the landscape toward the sea rather than competing with the terrain.

22 · The three-tier pool

Amankila’s three-tier swimming pool became one of the most recognisable images in resort architecture. Its power comes from alignment with slope, horizon and movement rather than from decorative complexity.

23 · Architecture as topography

At Amankila, circulation and architecture work with the hillside. The resort is experienced through levels, stairs, terraces and framed glimpses of sea.

24 · Privacy through plan

Hill’s luxury is often created by plan rather than ornament: separation between rooms, controlled approaches, walls, planting and carefully framed outlooks.

25 · The Datai Langkawi

The Datai Langkawi became another landmark project, developed with a deep relationship to rainforest and topography.

26 · Build around the forest

Rather than clearing a dominant platform for the hotel, the architecture was conceived in dialogue with the forest. The landscape remained a primary experiential author.

27 · Aga Khan Award

The Datai received an Aga Khan Award for Architecture, confirming that a luxury resort could be recognised not only commercially but as serious architecture responsive to cultural and environmental context.

28 · The Datai lesson

The resort’s lasting influence lies in making the forest itself feel like the principal luxury. Architecture gives access to the landscape without attempting to outperform it.

29 · The Lalu

The Lalu at Sun Moon Lake in Taiwan demonstrated Hill’s ability to work outside tropical island settings while preserving the same discipline of geometry, water, view and quiet materiality.

30 · Horizontal calm

The Lalu uses strong horizontal lines and controlled composition to make lake and mountain views feel inevitable rather than spectacularly staged.

31 · GHM

Hill’s relationship with GHM extended his influence through hotels such as The Chedi. The projects helped shape another Asian luxury language built around restraint, design and destination.

32 · The Chedi Chiang Mai

The Chedi Chiang Mai — later Anantara Chiang Mai — combined contemporary architecture with an existing colonial-era building and river setting.

33 · Old + new

Hill’s heritage approach typically avoids false historical continuity. New architecture can remain visibly contemporary while respecting the scale and atmosphere of what already exists.

34 · The Chedi Muscat

The Chedi Muscat became a defining Gulf resort, using long pools, low architecture, gardens and a controlled palette to create an unusually calm alternative to monumental Arabian luxury.

35 · Oman without pastiche

The project drew from regional spatial ideas without becoming a catalogue of decorative motifs. Locality emerged through massing, courtyards, water and climate.

36 · Amankora

Amankora in Bhutan expanded the Aman idea across multiple lodges rather than one resort. Hill contributed to a hospitality system in which architecture accompanies a journey through the country.

37 · Bhutan

Bhutan required particular restraint. Dzong and farmhouse traditions, mountain climate and Buddhist cultural context demanded interpretation without spectacle.

38 · The lodge as frame

At its best, Hill’s architecture acts as a frame for landscape and ritual. The guest notices mountain, forest, courtyard, fire and silence before noticing design authorship.

39 · India

Hill’s practice also worked in India, extending its approach to climates and cultural contexts very different from Southeast Asia.

40 · Japan

Japan became an important late-career geography, culminating in projects that translated Hill’s restraint into dense urban and highly refined cultural environments.

41 · Aman Tokyo

Aman Tokyo represented a major conceptual leap: the Aman resort idea placed high above one of the world’s largest cities.

42 · The urban sanctuary

Hill’s Aman Tokyo helped establish the modern ultra-luxury urban-sanctuary model: monumental calm, large-scale rooms, Japanese material references and controlled views inside a skyscraper.

43 · Japanese scale

Traditional Japanese architectural ideas were not copied literally. Proportion, screens, timber, stone, light and emptiness were abstracted into a contemporary hospitality language.

44 · The lobby as void

Aman Tokyo’s vast lobby volume demonstrates Hill’s confidence in emptiness. Luxury can come from space left unfilled rather than objects added.

45 · Silence in the city

The project proves one of Hill’s deepest principles can survive urban density: architecture can create psychological distance even when physical distance is impossible.

46 · COMO The Treasury

COMO The Treasury in Perth brought Hill back to his home city late in his career, adapting historic state buildings into a contemporary luxury hotel.

47 · Return home

The project is significant biographically: after a career shaped by Asia, Hill returned to Western Australia with an architectural language transformed by decades abroad.

48 · Heritage through contrast

At COMO The Treasury, contemporary interventions coexist with historic fabric rather than attempting to imitate it. The result depends on proportion, craft and restraint.

49 · Residential work

Kerry Hill Architects also developed major residential projects. The crossover matters because Hill’s hotels often possess domestic qualities: privacy, courtyards, controlled arrival and rooms that feel inhabited rather than staged.

50 · Less, but not minimalism

Hill is often described as minimalist, but the label can be misleading. His architecture is materially rich and spatially complex; it simply refuses unnecessary visual noise.

51 · Discipline

The strongest Hill projects feel inevitable because many decisions disappear. Alignment, joints, thresholds and proportions create calm through precision.

52 · Landscape is not decoration

Landscape is a structural part of the architecture. Buildings are positioned to create relationships with trees, water, terrain and climate rather than landscaped after the architectural object is complete.

53 · Sense of place

Hill helped make 'sense of place' a serious design objective before it became routine luxury-hotel marketing language. His projects demonstrate that locality can be spatial rather than decorative.

54 · The risk of imitation

As Hill’s approach became influential, the wider resort industry adopted courtyards, pavilions, local materials and restrained tropical modernism. What began as contextual response could become a repeatable visual formula.

55 · Context is not a style

The deeper lesson is that one cannot copy Hill by copying stone walls and reflecting pools. The method is to understand climate, culture, topography and use — which should produce different answers in different places.

56 · 2006 — Gold Medal

The Australian Institute of Architects awarded Hill its Gold Medal in 2006, the profession’s highest national honour in Australia.

57 · 2012 — Officer of the order of Australia

Hill was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2012 for distinguished service to architecture, particularly through design excellence in Southeast Asia.

58 · 2018 — Death

Kerry Hill died in Singapore in August 2018 at the age of 75. His practice continued, carrying forward a body of work deeply embedded in Asian hospitality architecture.

59 · What Hill changed

Kerry Hill helped establish a modern architectural language for luxury hospitality in which climate, landscape and local building memory could matter more than decorative grandeur. Through Aman, The Datai, GHM and later urban work, he demonstrated that low density, courtyards, pavilions, water, material restraint and carefully framed views could produce a luxury more powerful than ornament. He also helped move the idea of 'sense of place' from rhetoric into plan, section and material. His influence is visible throughout contemporary resort architecture, including in buildings designed by people who may never consciously reference him.

61 · Kerry Hill and Ed Tuttle

Both are foundational Aman architects and masters of restrained resort design. Tuttle often creates an almost archaeological relationship between architecture and site, particularly through stone, geometry and monumental calm. Hill’s work is often more explicitly climatic and pavilion-based. Both make luxury quieter by making place louder.

62 · Kerry Hill and Jean-Michel Gathy

Both emerged from the formative Aman design world and integrate architecture, landscape and hospitality experience. Gathy is generally more theatrical and willing to use dramatic scale. Hill is more austere and controlled. Gathy designs sensation through spectacle and sequence. Hill often designs sensation through subtraction.

63 · Kerry Hill and Adrian Zecha

Zecha’s hospitality concept created the conditions in which Hill’s architecture could flourish: small scale, privacy, place and resistance to conventional hotel formulas. Zecha asks the hotel to belong to the destination. Hill answers in walls, roofs, courtyards, water and landscape.

64 · Kerry Hill and geoffrey Bawa

Bawa is an essential predecessor in tropical modernism and the dissolution of boundaries between architecture and landscape. Hill’s work belongs to a later international hospitality generation but shares the conviction that climate, movement and landscape should generate form. Bawa opens the tropical modernist path. Hill carries parts of it into global luxury hospitality.

65 · LHL connections

• Kerry Hill Architects — founded Singapore 1979 · defining professional platform.
• Adrian Zecha — defining Aman commissioning and hospitality context.
• Ed Tuttle · Jean-Michel Gathy — fellow formative Aman design figures.
• Aman — defining long-term hospitality relationship.
• Amanusa · Amankila · Aman Tokyo · Amankora — representative Aman projects.
• The Datai Langkawi — defining rainforest resort and Aga Khan Award context.
• GHM / The Chedi — defining wider Asian luxury relationship.
• The Lalu · Sun Moon Lake — defining Taiwan project.
• The Chedi Muscat · The Chedi Chiang Mai — representative GHM projects.
• COMO The Treasury · Perth — defining late-career homecoming project.
• Geoffrey Bawa — essential tropical-modernist comparative context.

66 · Timeline

• 1943Kerry Hill is born in Perth, Western Australia.
• 1960sstudies architecture in Perth and begins professional career.
• Late 1960smoves to Hong Kong to work with Palmer & Turner.
• 1970sworks across Asia, including formative experience in Bali and Indonesia.
• 1979establishes Kerry Hill Architects in Singapore.
• 1980sdevelops resort and hospitality work across Southeast Asia.
• Late 1980s–1990sbecomes part of the formative Aman design circle with projects including Amanusa and Amankila.
• 1993The Datai Langkawi opens and becomes a landmark of rainforest resort architecture.
• 1990s–2000sexpands work through GHM, The Chedi, The Lalu and other Asian hospitality projects.
• 2001The Datai project receives an Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
• 2004The Chedi Muscat opens.
• 2004 onwardAmankora lodges develop in Bhutan.
• 2006receives Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal.
• 2012appointed Officer of the Order of Australia.
• 2014Aman Tokyo opens, becoming a defining urban Aman project.
• 2015COMO The Treasury opens in Perth.
• August 2018dies in Singapore aged 75.
• 2018 onwardKerry Hill Architects continues the practice and legacy.

67 · LHL story — Build Around the Forest

The owner owns the land.

The architect sees the site.

The developer sees the number of keys.

The forest was there first.

Do not ask where the hotel should dominate the landscape.

Ask where the landscape will allow the hotel to exist.

Move the building.

Keep the tree.

Frame the canopy.

Let the walk become part of the stay.

The forest is not the view from the resort.

The forest is the reason for the resort.

68 · A second story — Context Is Not a Style

You admire the hotel.

Stone walls.

Deep roofs.

A reflecting pool.

A courtyard.

You copy them somewhere else.

It looks similar.

It feels wrong.

Because the forms were answers to another climate, another landscape, another culture.

Do not copy the answer.

Copy the discipline of asking the question.

69 · Legacy

Kerry Hill belongs in the Luxury Hospitality Library because he helped teach global luxury hospitality that architecture could become more specific by becoming quieter. His buildings rarely need to announce themselves through decorative excess. Instead they establish relationships: wall and courtyard, roof and rain, room and view, pool and horizon, building and forest. In Bali, Aman gave Hill a platform to reinterpret local spatial memory without turning it into scenery. At Amankila, architecture descends with the land. At The Datai, rainforest becomes the principal luxury. At The Chedi Muscat, long pools and low buildings create calm in a region often associated with monumental hotel architecture. At Aman Tokyo, the same discipline survives inside a skyscraper, proving that psychological distance can be designed even when physical remoteness is impossible. Hill’s work became enormously influential, which creates the danger of reducing it to a visual recipe of pavilions, stone, water and timber. That misses the point. His deeper legacy is methodological: begin with climate, topography, culture and use; let landscape participate in authorship; and remove whatever prevents the guest from feeling where they are.