hospitalitystyle.com

(Spring 2011) posted on Thu Apr 21, 2011 EDT

Natural Resources: A palette of mountain blooms and truckloads of local granite and wood bring the landscape inside at the Hotel Eden Roc Ascona spa.

By Mary Scoviak

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

With its flower-themed treatment rooms, golden wood and shimmering pools, the Hotel Eden Roc Ascona’s spa in Switzerland brings the beauty of Lake Maggiore and the flora that frames it into the heart of this luxury resort. But creating this natural enclave in a complicated, multi-level space was no walk in the park. Locally based interior architecture and design firm Selvaggio SA first had to root out the warren of small rooms and underground closets that made up the former Beauty Center. Then the designers had to reconfigure the 21,500 sq. ft. footprint to contain seven new treatment rooms, pools, saunas, a fitness center, water therapies, relaxation rooms, the reception lobby and beauty and nail salons.

The clock was ticking, giving them just five-and-a-half months to complete the work—while putting the finishing touches on the resort’s 16-room Marina annex and its new restaurant. “We had to play around a lot and we had to play well to make all the pieces fit the puzzle,” says Carlo Rampazzi, Selvaggio’s founder and principal.

The designer knew what he and his studio would be up against. Selvaggio has shaped the property’s evolving visual identity since 1998, when Tschuggen Hotel Group (THG) acquired the Hotel Eden Roc and Hotel Europe au Lac and commissioned Rampazzi to blend them into the Hotel Eden Roc Ascona. He and his project team continued to refine the bold, contemporary feel during subsequent renovations and their design for Eden Roc Marina and the Restaurant Marina, which both opened in spring 2010.

In the words of Corinne Denzler, THG’s group director, the spa was “an immense challenge,” because it sits at the junction of the pre-existing hotels. That constrained the amount of available space and required a circulation pattern that would make it easy to walk from one building to the other or to various destinations within the wellness center. Although the previous design’s series of small rooms made sense when the space was more about beauty than holistic well-being, the layout had no relevance to Rampazzi’s aim of blurring the worlds without and within. Fortunately, THG understood the level of difficulty and allotted $21.5 million for the redevelopment.