Hill Motel

Collage    Hill Motel  Habitat   Atelier  ZZiggurrat   Italy  1966

The Motel is both a Motel and an Health Spa and it is located not far from the city of
Florence and the highly urbanized sprawl of the Arno river valley in the direction of
Pisa.
The hill-Motel is located on agricultural land and yet it does not support or promote
country living . Physical, mental health are needed when one returns back to the city,
the primary social environment and most of the time our permanent residence.

The hill-Motel does not support an architecture that embraces and express the tradition
of a culture directly connected to country living and the alternative agrarian life styles
connected to the farming of the outdoors.
The building does not search for an integration with nature. It positions itself in the
morphology of a hill as a building-landscape with an identity of its own, intended to be
the counterpart to the natural, at times man made historical landscapes of the Tuscan
country side. The project , here also presented as an image over an hypothetical site ,
in fact confirms itself as an urban icon over the natural grounds of the country side
creating physical and cultural tension .

The hill Motel houses 600 small terraced suites, a performing , art, exhibition spaces ,
indoor sports facilities, indoor swimming pool , spa facilities , ambulatory , shops gyms
and group participation meeting rooms . In some areas the visual display of electronic
media are the new forms of social aggregations a sort of new institutions to be conquered
and shared.
The formal configuration of the project is not generated from the understanding of the
physical unique configuration of the site. The concrete structure hotel lays parallel to
the below surface of the selected site and uses the ground solely as a foundation support .
There is no other integration with the site, at least in the sense of a traditional use, of
the term ‘integration ‘. The project is formally self conscious . Plans show well focused
design solutions for the visually treated interiority of the hotel that seems at first to
alienate or isolate the architecture of the project from its more natural contemplative
surroundings.

The many suites of the Motel are rooms of limited dimensions. They are repeated
equally in great number almost to become un-noticed in the concrete and glass display
of a flat terraced building of vast proportions and limited elevations.
The stepped roof is an artificial ground with hundreds of steps . The vertical portion of
each step represents the horizontal configuration of all windows serving the room’s
interiors at a given location.
Each room windows are the risers of a limited portion of the steps of the waterproofed
surface of the concrete roof one can freely walk on.
From the guest rooms the views of the outdoors are always framed by a very
compelling repetitive geometry, as if the analytical process on display could prevent
any reading of the site as an unified embracing total experience.
At night the stepped platform lights itself up and becomes a large light fixture closer as
an image to the runways of airports than one of the well known historical hill towns
of Tuscany.

Location
Calvana Tuscany Italy
Competition
1968
Scope of Services
Chief Designer Atelier Zziggurrat
Construction Cost
N/A
Gross Floor Area
N/A