The island
Eleven hectares,one idea
Build less than the island can carry, and let the day set the pace.
Our story
A resort that fits inside the tree line
Maravi opened in 2019 on an uninhabited island in the Lakshadweep archipelago. The brief to the architects was a single sentence: nothing taller than a palm. The villas are timber and thatch, raised on stilts so the sand and the crabs can move underneath. Two thirds of the island was left exactly as it was found.
Power comes from a solar field hidden in the interior and a battery bank the size of a tennis court. Water is made from the sea and bottled in glass. Almost everyone who works here comes from the neighbouring islands, and the reef in front of the resort is a no-take zone that we pay to patrol.
What we hold to
What we will not do
Every building on the island sits below the tree line, on stilts, so sand and crabs can move underneath.
Water is made from the sea and bottled in glass on the island. Nothing single-use comes ashore.
The house reef is a no-take zone that we pay to patrol. Fish for the kitchens is bought from island boats.
Path lights go off for the turtles that nest on the south beach, and for the stars.
The people
People you will meet
Cooked in Goa, Lisbon and Colombo before she came for a week and stayed for six years.
Born two islands north. Knows every channel in the lagoon and every star above it.
Keeps the manta catalogue, runs the coral nursery and leads the morning reef swim.
So far
A short history
- The island is leased, on the condition that two thirds stay wild2016
- Maravi opens with twenty villas and one kitchen2019
- The solar field goes live; the generators are switched off2021
- The overwater spa and the north jetty villas are finished2023
- The coral nursery plants its ten-thousandth fragment2026