Typology: Hospitality, tourism
Location: Albania
Size: 9350 sqm;
Year: 2020;
Client: Private;
Status: Ongoing

White Waves

The Drimadhes Beach is most commonly perceived as being a beautiful, pristine, and idyllic paradise destination in Albania. The locals live in a delicate balancing act with nature, traditional architecture, and they are totally dependent on tourism. Thus, when we were given an opportunity to design a Drimadhes hotel, we chose to delight the senses through education, creating awareness, and new paradigms of interacting with the physical environment.

The desire for Low Impact and High Experiential Return is completely defined by the architecture of the building and this defines the physical design solution.

The site is surrounded by several ecological zones which become the basis of creating experiential programs that guides the guests through their journey of discovery and awareness creation. Each zone has unique anchoring activities.

The architecture design is treated as nature itself. Forms and spaces are derived from nature, sea waves, and the juxtaposition of these forms against the variations of the traditional architecture which creates the architectural expression of the hotel. These family of forms constitute a nature inspired village that encourages the guests to question, speculate, imagine and thereby creates awareness.