Hotel Accord International.

A cream classical hotel on a Chhindwara approach road, built around a rooftop terrace and pool.

The elevation is carried on fluted pilasters and deep cornices, lit from the base so the order reads after dark rather than flattening out.

The roof is treated as a floor rather than a lid: a terrace, a pool and an open deck sit above the guest floors, which is where the property earns its evening trade.

A roof used as a floor changes the structure beneath it. The pool needs a slab that will carry water and a waterproofing detail still sound in twenty years, the plant serving it has to be got up there and got at afterwards, and escape has to work from a level people occupy after dark.

Lighting an order from the base rather than washing it from across the street is what keeps a classical elevation reading at night instead of flattening into a silhouette. Accord Premier came back to us for the wildlife resort at Pench.