Hotel in Giarre: for a stay with views of Etna and the sea

By Editorial Staff - 24 August 2021

Rooms with views of the sea and Mount Etna, neatly designed green spaces, an outdoor swimming pool with a solarium, and a panoramic roof terrace – just some of the hallmarks of Scau Studio’s design for Hotel in Giarre, in the Italian province of Catania. The project began by replacing an obsolete residential building to create a hotel as an extension of an existing structure. Following the contours of the site, which has an average height difference of ten feet (3 m) on the eastern side, the new building was designed as a stepped volume, oriented along the north-south axis.

A building with a close connection to the external space

The new building, which is connected to the existing structure by a walkway with a glass railing, has sixteen rooms of different sizes on three levels. Spacious and well lit, the rooms have large windows overlooking the sea and balconies that are separated from each other by vertical walls of plants growing in weathering steel planters. The sequence of balconies ends with an empty double-height frame – a sort of portal that marks the location of the ground-floor entrance, where, besides the reception area, there’s a multipurpose room. While the eastern elevation is sloping, to the west the building opens onto outdoor spaces and a large portico. The design is completed by the large rooftop solarium that offers views of the sea and Mount Etna.

The building’s construction is based on reinforced concrete columns, beams, and slabs, with brick infill and wall insulation. The exterior walls are light in color with weathering steel elements, including the cladding on the portico pillars and the lava stone retaining walls. This is an elegant new building that’s perfectly integrated into the surrounding landscape.