architect: WMR arquitectos
location: Matanzas, Cuba
The hotel is located next to the sea, on a land on which in the 1900s the old port facilities were located and later a Franciscan Monastery.
A 4x4 wooden square structure was built around the trees, including them in the design, making up patios within the hotel as well as incorporating the chapel , working with the relation between private and public areas. Between the access-chapel‘s patio and the beach a wooden boardwalk was contemplated. It reminds us of a peer and it connects this two areas together, highlighting the hotel‘s relationship and projection with and towards the sea.
The hotel is made up by 10 rooms and 2 backpacker‘s rooms, a pool, sauna and wooden tubs area, a reading room, a meetings room, terraces, patios, a restaurant and a barbecue‘s area on the beach, plus facilities. The main materials of the hotel are wood in the rough and glass, obtained mainly from the surroundings. They make up a light structure, easy to build and very flexible. With the 2010‘s tsunami, which wrecked and deformed the hotel completely, the hotel had to be rebuilt and the work was done quickly and with little or no impact.
