Jardin de Villars | a hotel as a village

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CONCEPT:

The core idea of the project follows the cultural movement of the so called “Landflucht”, or in english described as the escape from the city, to the countryside. According to future hotel-business- and leisure trends humans urge to travel is on high demand, but so is the need for individualism. A place where one can feel home, being away from home. 
People want to escape from their city apartment and search for a truly unique experience. In a highly flexible, formable and to all demands intimately reacting design. With all the standard they are used to. 

The project took those ideas and reimagined the hotel as we know it today. Direct inspiration was found close by the construction site. Village de Bories.
A village structure provides maximum amount of individualism on an urban level, where as the hotel provides the maximum service for each room. By combining the two worlds we created a new kind of “countryside hotel-village”. The hotel as a village.

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MODULE:

The modules consist out of 2 sleeping units and one living unit, you can either rent them seperate or all together. The design features to modul clusters. The L cluster and the snake cluster. Both clusters can easily be changed to the users or the providers needs. The connecting walls feature, wall elements the can be rotated to open or to close the rooms from each other.

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METHOD:

The 7 meter square grid which is placed on the site follows different rulesets and was the base for the modules. By optimizing the grid layout, for several crucial design decisions. 
Maximizing the view potential for each module, but also respecting the landscape and the ecology on that very particular site. With our design we were able to hardly harm any trees found on site. Furthermore the design was lifted and placed on pillars. For two reasons. Fist preventing the flooding risk on site and second creating phenomenal views for all modules. The third and fourth advantage of lifting is the the very low impact on the site and the increase of available surface for planting and developing an biodynamic ecology. With thyme, rosemary and many more plants. 
Those units are connected with pathways and ramps, creating a urban city street with plazas, urban balconies, shadowy arcades, “chill-out” spaces, like stairs and many more little features. Features one would also find in the city.
Besides of connecting all the units, handicapped accessible, this Circulation Space serves as mentioned as social condenser, a place if you want to meet people, chat, walk, relax and breath…