Text description provided by the architects. Wellness Hotel Sotelia fills the gap between two existing hotels, both of them not hiding their different architectural origins. New hotel is not trying to summarize samples from nearby structures but rather clearly distances itself from the built environment and connects, instead, with its natural surroundings.
In design process primary concern was to avoid immense building mass, like the one suggested in the client's brief, which would have blocked the last remaining view of the forest. The volume is broken up into small units arranged in landscape-hugging tiers. As a result, the four storey 150-room building appears much lower and smaller then this description would suggest.
The specific shape of the hotel was dictated by the folds in the landscape. The unique structures offers passer-by some strong spatial experiences: from the front, the building is perceived as a two-dimensional set composed of parallel planes placed one behind the other; a walk around the hotel reveals entirely different views of the timber facade, from a plane vertical wooden slats to a rhythmic arrangement of balconies and wooden terraces.
