WATG Designs Luxury Hotel in Istria, Croatia
Small town of Rovinj will be home to Hotel Monte Mulini

by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

How do you . . . design a luxury hotel that embraces its hillside landscape and coastline?

Summary: The London office of Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo (WATG) has unveiled designs for the Hotel Monte Mulini in Rovinj (pronounced Ru-vè-ig-no), a small, historic coastal city on the Istrian peninsula of Croatia on the Adriatic coast. The Istrian peninsula, a popular Mediterranean tourist resort attraction, currently is burgeoning with resort development. Rovinj, a tiny town jutting off the peninsula into the Adriatic with architecture dating back to Romanesque style, is following suit with a contemporary, luxury hotel to take advantage of the scenic coast. Groundbreaking will take place in September, and the hotel is slated to open June 2008. The hotel will be owned and operated by the Istrian business firm Adris Grupa dd.

Rovinj, one of nine towns on the peninsula, serves as home to a bilingual population of 13,000 Croatian and Italian citizens. In addition to agriculture and fishing, tourism drives its economy. The Rovinj Archipelago of 22 islets provides a natural backdrop for leisure activities. The Old Town of Rovinj boasts a rich architectural heritage: Narrow, winding streets are lined with squares of tightly clustered, pastel-colored houses formed in the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical styles. Highlighting the town is a Venetian bell tower. At 188,000 square feet, the Hotel Monte Mulini will combine regional and Modern architecture on a sloping hillside site overlooking the sea.

Modern meets Classical
Jeremy Heyes, RIBA, WATG director, says the hotel’s architecture will relate strongly to the contours and profile of the land. “The hotel will look onto the bay, with a nature preserve beyond,” Heyes describes. “The site slopes 25 meters [80 feet] from entrance to sea level, giving us the opportunity to escalate and place the building back into a hillside, giving us more space, with the pool decks in the front. Existing pine trees on the site at 20–25 meters high will be in front in the public spaces.”

Limestone, prevalent in the Mediterranean, will imbue the wide, staggered hillside structure, which will feature an elaborate timber roof and—for solar shading—a massive signature overhang. “If you look at the old part of this city, it’s a bit like Venice, with the Classical buildings,” says Heyes. “We are bringing those kinds of materials into the architecture, such as local limestone, together with some very modern ones. For example, we’ll use timber for the main foyer roof, but the 120 guest rooms will take on a more American feel, with glass balconies with steel balustrades against a simple rendered façade.“

Seeing the sea
Glass underscores Heyes’ goal that everyone “see the sea” from any vantage point. Both exterior and interior spaces are wide open to capture ocean views and sunlight. Heyes and his team, however, were conscious to give the site an appropriate south-facing elevation so the hotel won’t take too much of a direct hit by the summer sun.

“We are opening up all the public spaces to the south and all the views—everybody coming into the hotel will first see the sea, not the reception desk,” Heyes explains. “You enter at the top level into an open, main foyer. All the hotel rooms look directly south out at the Adriatic. This building is going to be used year round, so we created an indoor space to give guests an outdoor feeling for all seasons. We wanted to allow guests to have open lounges and glass spaces so they are very consciously sitting among the trees, can see the sea, and have as much sunlight as possible.”

The pool challenge
Heyes adds that Rovinj’s seaside landscape was a design challenge, especially when it came to the forefront pools. “Levels are always a challenge. The elevation is great to work with as far as the architecture, because all the guest rooms will have a view—everybody will only be looking down. The problem, of course, is swimming pool water is level. The opportunity here allowed us to place different pools at different levels with cascades between them. The propensity there is to incorporate standard ceramic turquoise pools, which would dreadful in the off season. Instead, we are going to have water reflect the sky. As a result, the pools will look like a body of water in the landscape, with the foyer looking down onto it.”

Heyes thinks the The Hotel Monte Mulini project will inspire an interesting dialogue with Rovinj citizens. “We’re pushing them further then they’ve been before with attention to detail. We’re ripping up the rule books that have been written there and giving them a far more liberating hotel experience and architecture.”