Heritance Kandalama stands on the shore of the Kandalama Reservoir in Dambulla, about 11 kilometers southeast of Sigiriya. Geoffrey Bawa designed it for Kandalama Hotels, of which Aitken Spence Hotels holds 63 percent. It was built from 1992 to 1995, though the introduction says 1991, and it opened in 1995. The article calls the style tropical modernism.
The hotel has 152 rooms and 15 suites over six stories, with a 2.7-kilometer entrance road. A large cave-like porte-cochère sits against the cliff, and a boulder-lined, tunnel-like walkway leads to an open-air lobby with a view across the reservoir.
It earned LEED certification in 2000, the first outside the US, and was the first Asian hotel accredited with Green Globe.
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