Zensala is a small, three-story resort situated along Mae Ping riverbank in Chiang Mai, Thailand with 14 guest rooms in 3 different types.The resort facilities include a swimming pool, restaurants, a meeting room, spa, library, and administration office. According to the law and regulations that apply to this particular land shape, the design team came up with a somewhat peculiar building area of nearly 400 feet long and 20 feet wide on average. In consideration of circulation flow, practical accessibility, and privacy of the guest areas, the main building was designed in a long strip running parallel to the Ping River, giving all rooms a panoramic river view. The design team consequently had to deal with the challenges of a continuous building, such as how to create practical circulation for both guests and staff and how to create a feeling of privacy for guests. In achieving this the form of this building needed to be extended, subtracted, split, and overlapped. All 14 rooms appear to be different, to create visual interest. The architect played with light and shadow using unevenly-sized boxes to form the building and blend with the surroundings by using cement finishing, wooden laths, and bamboo in a contemporary design context. Local wisdom has also been adapted in this project. Northern-style concrete tiles and traditional wooden blinds (“Fhar-Lai” in Thai) have always been practical for tropical-climate architecture, so they were applied in a new modern context. This creates a stunning form and a beautiful lighting effect for the architecture.