Cover Eve Kalayarat Vanich, the project's Director and the family's next-generation torchbearer, is transforming a generations-old estate into Synthesis Ark Phuket, the island’s most ambitious urban experiment. (Image: Vorapong Tanakan)
Eve Kalayarat Vanich, the project's Director and the family's next-generation torchbearer, is transforming a generations-old estate into Synthesis Ark Phuket, the island’s most ambitious urban experiment. (Image: Vorapong Tanakan)
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How the Vanich family is transforming a generations-old estate into Synthesis Ark Phuket, the island’s most ambitious urban experiment.
Amid the sweeping transformation of Phuket—an island once synonymous with sun-drenched escapes now quietly repositioning itself as the address of choice for the world's most discerning global citizens—a historic 491-rai plot along Thepkasattri Road is being reimagined from the ground up. What was once a tin mine, then a palm plantation belonging to the Vanich family for generations, is now the site of Synthesis Ark Phuket: a 50-billion-baht megaproject that promises far more than architectural grandeur. Embedded within it is a profound philosophy of how we ought to live.
Tatler sat down with Eve Kalayarat Vanich, the project's Director and the family's next-generation torchbearer, to explore the vision behind one of Thailand's most ambitious developments—and what it truly means to inherit not just land, but a sense of place.
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Above Synthesis Ark Phuket: a 50-billion-baht megaproject that promises far more than architectural grandeur. Embedded within it is a profound philosophy of how we ought to live. (Image: Synthesis Ark Phuket)
Synthesis Ark Phuket: a 50-billion-baht megaproject that promises far more than architectural grandeur. Embedded within it is a profound philosophy of how we ought to live. (Image: Synthesis Ark Phuket)
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A Name With a Mission
The name itself is a thesis. Rooted in her father's lifelong fascination with science, the word Synthesis draws directly from photosynthesis—the biological process of transforming raw elements into something greater. “It speaks to renewal,” Kalayarat explains, “to taking what already exists and synthesising it into something more meaningful.” Ark, meanwhile, carries the weight of myth: a vessel that holds everything together, much like Noah's Ark. Taken as one, the name is both manifesto and promise.
That promise is crystallised in the project's official slogan: 'Our Place, Our Pride, Our Legacy'—words Kalayarat is careful to say are not mere marketing. "We want this to be something genuinely built by people from Phuket. Not just another city that looks modern but has no soul.” True to that conviction, the masterplan deliberately preserves original features of the land: the topography, the old retention ponds, even certain palm trees—kept not as nostalgia, but as living threads connecting past to present.
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Above 20% of the total site has been set aside as green space and retention lakes—land that could, by any conventional calculation, generate considerable returns. (Image: Synthesis Ark Phuket)
20% of the total site has been set aside as green space and retention lakes—land that could, by any conventional calculation, generate considerable returns. (Image: Synthesis Ark Phuket)
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Fifteen Minutes to Everything
To trace the origins of Synthesis Ark's most defining concept, one must look to Kalayarat’s own global upbringing. Having left Thailand at the age of ten to study in Singapore and later the United Kingdom, she spent her formative years navigating some of the world's most thoughtfully planned cities.
“You could walk from a shopping mall to the bus stop to school and move through an entire city without ever having to step into a dark alleyway or a street without pavements,” she recalls. That experience became the direct blueprint for the project's masterplan. The ambition is elegant in its simplicity: every corner of the 491-rai development should be reachable on foot within fifteen minutes. “Even if you live in the furthest residential zone, you should be able to walk to the supermarket, the office building, or the wellness centre without once worrying about traffic,” she says. In a country where urban planning has so often been an afterthought, this is a quietly radical idea.
The first phase to break ground is Nexus—a mixed-use development comprising Grade-A office space, retail, a business hotel, and a comprehensive wellness hub. The logic behind leading with offices is characteristically grounded. “Most office space in Phuket is still shophouses or older buildings. Nexus addresses a real gap for a new generation of professionals who see Phuket not just as a holiday destination, but as a permanent home.”
Legacy Over Profit
Perhaps the most revealing decision in the entire masterplan is one of deliberate restraint: 20% of the total site has been set aside as green space and retention lakes—land that could, by any conventional calculation, generate considerable returns. Kalayarat is unapologetic about the choice.
“The advantage of owning the land entirely is that we get to decide whether we simply maximise profit, or whether we build something that genuinely improves the lives of the people who live here. We chose the latter.”
It is, in the end, exactly the kind of balance the project itself strives for—between a family's past and a city's future, between the stillness of an island and the ambitions of the world arriving at its shore.
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Natthawut Saengchuwong, the Bangkok-based Editor-in-Chief for Tatler Thailand and Tatler GMT, previously shaped GQ Thailand. Beyond the editorial world, he meticulously curates an enviable lifestyle, marked by his exquisite record collection, refined home decor, and tranquil garden pursuits.
