Utopic Design – Kefalonia Hotel

Of course this is in the concept phase, and as we don’t talk very much about hotels here at archtopia, we won’t go on detailing the matter. We hope this serves as inspiration for the young architects out there.

The latest hotel design in Kefalonia, Greece created by the Divercity Architects intends to blend this contemporary hotel with the vernacular architecture of the surroundings.  Because of to the site conditions, the hotel blends to the sloping topology of the steep hill and it rests on and then breaks into four distinct strands that divide the site into north and south plots.   While fifteen luxury villas occupy the northern plot,  the southern portion contains gardens and areas for relaxation.  The facades are clad in operable perforated wooden panels that both serve to separate and extend the private living space into the outdoors.

Brilliant and delightful design, and surroundings.

Kefalonia Hotel

Kefalonia Hotel Interior

Designer: Divercity Architects (London; Athens)
Building type: Hotel
Location: Kefalonia, Greece
website: www.divercityarchitects.com
Status: Under construction; estimated completion, 2012

via ArchDaily

Found this the other day, and thought I should share it with you. The hotel is definitely a piece of work, and the quality of services offered inside is well known. So a little about the building and the interior design, because this is my main focus:

The Empire sits right off of Columbus Avenue in the heart of the Upper West Side, but it feels more like a swanky downtown hot spot, where the happening crowd sips mojitos on mohair stools by candlelight. The décor of the property is anything but modest. A chocolate-brown and gold-flecked palette is jazzed up with fierce but fashionable tiger-print throw pillows and cotton-velvet chairs.

The custom furnishings, fixtures and fabrics make all 420 rooms feel like sexy, modern apartments with a nostalgic feel. Woody wallpaper, ebony accents and walnut floors pay homage to nearby Central Park. The soothing teak bathrooms, rainfall showerheads and L’Occitane bath products offset the otherwise dramatic décor, a retreat from the bustling streets of NYC.

The Empire feels like a swanky downtown locale where the happening crowd sips mojitos on mohair stools by candlelight. – Samantha Marcus Yanks

Neat clean design, with a warm feeling, invites you to sit comfortable and forget about your day to day routine. The lobby has in the corner two walls with shelves carved inside them, and here and there candles to light up the mood.

The hotel’s iconic neighbor, Lincoln Center, has just gone through its own massive renovation. After countless seasons, NYC Fashion Week is moving from Bryant Park to Lincoln Center (September 2010).

It seems change is in the air.

The Empire Hotel is “a modern refuge, with a sleek rooftop lounge, pool deck and sumptuous lobby bar. Despite its giant 1920s neon sign, it now resembles the sort of hotel you’d expect to see in the meatpacking district, not around Lincoln Center.”

– The New York Times

Monte Carlo – Beach Hotel

Designer: WORKS.PSLAB

Yeah, you probably see this kinda stuff all the time, but anyway, give this hotel a try, ok? This is a pretty a awesome one. Why? Because of the lights! The designers in this here project bring you a couple of lighting solutions that make the newly renovated Monte-Carlo Beach Hotel, Monte-Carlo S.B.M. a sight to behold! Come with me! Light up your seaside world!

These fixtures are made from laser-cut metal sheets cut to leaf-like aesthetics with a ring for fixation around the light source. A hammering technique used with the sheets gives them each a unique look. The disk that holds these leaves to the light source is turnable, allowing for multiple settings in each lamp.

Now there’s two lighting solutions here, don’t fool yourself, one of them circular, a very nice and basically basic solution exclusively for the ceiling. The other is my favorite. A system of superimposed short disks combine several sheets which reflect light off in all sorts of directions and intensities.

While these lovely lights are often set all by their lonesome on the sides of walls and on ceilings, the grand conglomeration takes place in the lobby. The lobby is a giant dome, with a cone-shaped center ceiling filled with this unique lamps for a lovely view.

Astonished! That’s all I can say.

via Yanko

Architects: Ezzo
Location: Felgueiras, Portugal
Architect in Charge: César Machado Moreira
Collaborators: Fátima Barroso, Hugo Torres, Carla Barbosa
Project year: 2008
Constructed Area: 200 sqm
Photographs: Joao Ferrand

The Place

It’s a project for a rural hotel located in a farm with 10 hectares of land, 90% of which are used as vineyards. The interior of the land contains various previously existent elements. The main building from the XVI century stands out and several little constructions which are very damaged and/or ruins (the house of the home keepers, the pet store and kitchen).

existant building

Program

The program was to recover the main house and do a new building to altogether house a maximum of 22 people, plus rooms that would support the hotel and an outdoor swimming pool.

In the main building, which is a construction with almost 500 years, there was a pursue to step in the least possible in order to keep its identity and the character of the existent architecture. Infrastructures and bathrooms were made and some of the interior spaces were adapted to new uses.

Rural Hotel

In a landscape with strong rural features, the hotel is conceived from the existent, all spaces are spread from the main house, which is also the owner’s permanent house, and from the reminiscent ruins where new spaces fill some of its interiors.

The new rooms are comfortable and protected in the interior by a unitary volume located in a lower elevation and perpendicular to the main building in order to assure guest’s privacy. From the outside the new building isn’t highlighted in the landscape and its form and texture come from the idea of not adding anything to the land, and its volume has a strong attachment to what already exists and to the idea of subtraction. Fully made in concrete, its exterior walls were worked to approach the texture and tone of the land after doing sections during excavations.

The towers that define the entrance of each room keep the form of the battlements of the main building and potentiate in the observer different experiences in the relation with the whole context.

The individual and exterior access through paths of grit, identical to the surrounding fields, pursues to approach the visitors to the rural character of the landscape.

More on ArchDaily

he WISA Wooden Design Hotel by architect Pieta-Linda Auttila may be a temporary structure but it has left a lasting impression on those who study design and woodworking. Situated on the island in the harbor of Valkosaari in Helsinki, this sculptural wooden building was the winner of a competition organized by UPM, a leading Finnish forest products company. As they say all good things must come to an end, and the WISA Wooden Design Hotel will be dismantled at the end of September. Hopefully we will see more similar works by Pieta-Linda Auttila in the future on a larger and more permanent scale.

Project: Yanlord Peninsula
Author: RMJM Architects
Location: China

RMJM’s design is a contemporary interpretation of the Suzhou waterside dwelling community and responds to traditional culture and the environment.  The basic façade palette uses white, grey and charcoal colours while titanium, zinc and copper cladding, which will oxidize and change colour over time, are used to bring an evolving aesthetic to the site.

As seen on Archtracker