Situated beside a baroque monastery and surrounded by breath-taking views this hotel-spa project aims to collect three different atmospheres in one unique place.
Attached to the monastery cloister, the building is a retreat for privacy, enclosed with the nature; as a spa, is a place for relax, in constant contact with water elements; as a hotel, is not just a room for living, but a space to life delighting.
The building reveals an "L" shape that embraces a central volume. The L piece closes the cloister in one side and looks into the extended landscape in the other. The apartments and rooms are located in this first layer. They are separated of the other services by a corridor and light courtyard that surrounds the central volume. In this way, the L body works like a barrier that protects the peace of the cloister from the movement of the hotel, and also, as a window to the landscape, as it lets the eye go through the apartments into the landscape. In the other volume is where the hotel common life happens. The central body consists in two tubes separated by an open space. The service and office rooms are located in one tube and the library and restaurant in the other. Between the two tubes the reception and the leisure rooms. The big spa pool in the underground creates in the floor level an interior “cloister”. The spa services, including exterior and interior pool, massage rooms and gym, are situated in two underground levels opening to an exterior courtyard.
Two pre-existing towers are preserved and use as visual points of reference. Both guide the visitor and connect the different areas of the hotel. A new stone wall links them (remaining of the actual situation) and works as a vertical connection to the spa underground. Also a new promenade closes the underground courtyard on the north side creating a nature background to the two corridors that connect the hotel from south to north.
Four natural elements are strongly present in the building: wood, stone, water and light.
The wood south facade shows a light-and-shadow rhythm, respecting the composition of the baroque; in the contrary, the east facade is completely opened to the nature. Stone appears in the facades of the underground levels and in the linking towers and wall that lead us to the underground. Different water surfaces appear inside and outside the building: the west entrance pond, the centre spa pool ("heart" of the building), the east little pond next to the apartments' rest area, and the waterfall that goes from the little pond down to the outside pool. Light enters in the building in different ways creating various rhythms depending of the separation between the slats of the wood façade and roof. Wood covers the building as a forest that filters the light into the inside.