Pure Line

The original task formulated by the client was to create the central core for a countryside hotel complex, that is, two buildings – an office one and a building where the restaurant and the reception area would be situated.

The topography of the design site, located on the Karelian Isthmus, is fairly unique – a horseshoe-shaped plot wedged between a round lagoon and rock outcroppings of up to several dozen meters in height. The only way to the site is through a narrow opening between overhanging granite rocks. All this makes the site a secret hidden world, an isolated picturesque location.In the first half of the 20th century a farm stood here, though all that remains of it are several stone foundations and a glade freed from forest, which makes up the site.

Our review of the topography and history of the site led us to a decision to revise the configuration factor of the functions that the client needed, and to offer a scattering of smaller facilities instead of two large buildings.

The key reference here was a Scandinavian or Karelian village with its scale, mutual alignment, silhouettes of the facilities and color range of materials used.As a result, we created an environment with necessary density and complexity, articulating each functional unit as an independent object.The main hospitality areas, the reception space with the lobby bar and the restaurant, are resolved using an expressive and emphatically modern plasticity, while the service units (dormitory, offices and warehouses) have concise silhouettes with two sloping roof surfaces, shaping a necessary background.

The restaurant building, the largest of the functional units of the project, is complemented with a tower reminiscent of bell towers of the kirks and lighthouses of fishing villages, which actually contains private dining spaces, an intimate bar and a viewing platform on top of the tower. The pure white tower becomes the focal point and compositional center of this space.

The amenities block is a volume with two sloping roof surfaces and a technical yard adjacent to it, surrounded by an enveloping gabion wall filled with large pieces of broken granite.