Community of Structure has turned a former monastery in Italy into the Monastero Arx Vivendi lodge by conserving and refreshing the interiors, and inserting a sequence of glazed spa rooms into its gardens.
Italian studio Community of Structure (NOA) labored carefully with the Trento Workplace of Cultural Heritage to rework half of the Seventeenth-century advanced in Arco, close to Lake Garda, into the Monastero Arx Vivendi lodge. A separate church and cloister on the positioning stay occupied by nuns.
Comprised of widespread areas and 40 visitor rooms alongside a newly-constructed wellness space, the retrofit sought to retain and construct on as most of the authentic options as doable, together with a seven-metre excessive wall that surrounds the whole advanced.
“The majesty and rigour of the structure, the lengthy corridors, the vaulted ceilings, all of those options mix to present these areas an actual olde-worlde really feel,” stated mission architect Francesco Padovan.
“Each building selection, each materials and element has been studied to attract on the majesty of the pre-existing context.”
On the bottom flooring of the monastery are the widespread areas, together with a reception, breakfast room, bar and kitchen, which sit beneath authentic rib-vault ceilings.
These areas have been restored and lined with a rippled antique-effect plaster, with new concrete flooring constructed atop the previous.
Stone, wrought iron and picket fittings within the reception space, breakfast room and bar purpose to echo each the colors and textures of the unique constructing, creating a sense of “nice austerity” and illuminated by minimal hanging gentle fittings.
Above, the 40 visitor rooms are unfold throughout the primary flooring round a grand central hall, and the loft, the place the big picket roof beams have been left uncovered and topped by a big skylight.
Every bed room occupies what would have been two monastery cells, with a bigger suite occupying the previous washroom.
The antique-effect plaster end has additionally been utilized in these areas, complemented by pale wooden flooring, black iron furnishings and earth-toned materials, and the unique doorways have been restored on their external-facing sides.
The Salas per Aquam wellness house is a brand new improvement consisting of seven glass and metallic volumes constructed alongside a stone-wall “backbone”.
Rest lounges, therapy areas and saunas occupy these rooms, with a central room opening onto an outside pool.
“Our purpose was to create a dialogue extra with the encompassing agricultural panorama than with the monastery,” defined Padovan.
“To do that we used quite simple components with sturdy structural readability. The sunshine metallic framework, organised in pillars and beams, is impressed by the attribute lemon homes of rural Lake Garda.”
The interiors of those new areas are supposed to create a way of calm and leisure, with bleached oak panels, pew-like benches, suspended beds and complicated milled panels on the partitions and ceilings.
NOA just lately accomplished one other hospitality mission in Italy, extending a lodge in South Tyrol with a sequence of gabled “treehouse” suites raised on stilts.
The images is by Alex Filz.