For more than sixty years, the original Kona Village was a rare thing in Hawaiian hospitality — a low-rise, thatched-bungalow retreat that refused to become a tower resort. Its destruction by the 2011 tsunami, and the seven-year reconstruction that followed, gave Walker Warner Architects' Greg Warner and interior designer Nicole Hollis of NICOLEHOLLIS the rare opportunity to rebuild that ethos from the ground up rather than simply restore it. Kona Village, A Rosewood Resort, reopened in July 2023 across 81 sacred acres at Kaʻūpūlehu on Kahuwai Bay, the Big Island's Kona coast, with 150 single-story hale arranged in village-like crescents that settle into the landscape with the same quiet confidence the original always had. The architecture earns its place. Thatched roofs — constructed from recycled materials — crown each hale in a form that echoes traditional Polynesian building without costuming it. Inside, the rooms move between two registers: some feature steeply pitched natural-timber gabled ceilings that frame the Pacific like a picture window, while others carry exposed rafter ceilings above four-poster beds in dark, rope-detailed hardwood, with rush-woven benches, sculptural side tables, and handwoven area rugs grounding the palette. The oceanfront terraces, lined in teak-framed lounge furniture and edged by a black-surround pool, keep the lava-rock shore visible at every angle. LEED Gold certification and a solar-powered microgrid confirm that this reconstruction was concerned with more than appearance.

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