EPIC SANA Algarve challenged us to integrate a hotel into nature. This project encourages us to speak of the landscape. Of the genius loci. The spirit of the place. The area had a significant asset, filled as it was with greenery including trees that were already quite mature, set out in eight hectares that encroach on the national biological reserve. We visited the property time and time again to understand how to add value to this landscape. To ensure that the human intervention was enriching, nutritious.
To heal the scars of an often reckless urbanism.
This pine-blanketed area was scarred by man with rough clearings that sullied nature. The question we asked was why not raise our vision using those scarred areas? Idealisation was followed by persuasion. We had to argue with supervisory bodies to convince them that it would be better to intervene in the reserve in the destroyed areas, and save other parts that were outside the reserve but where mature trees would allow us to protect the landscape and the environment. It was to be several years before the work bore fruit. The final plan enabled us to save eighty per cent of the trees, now part and parcel of the resort. A system of vistas. We were inspired by the main asset, the landscape, to create a system of vistas based on regeneration of the tree cover and on its proximity to the sea. Naturally, one can see the sea from the EPIC SANA Algarve but also breathe in the aroma of the pine trees. Where sea and pines were missing, we used architecture and landscape architecture to create scenarios, in particular in the leisure areas by the swimming pools and bars. Which is also and above all a luxury hotel.
Not all features in a five star hotel overshadow the feeling that our triumph, our achievement in the EPIC SANA Algarve project was the triumph of integration. The hotel is practically invisible from boats passing out at sea. When we visit the resort we have no idea how big it is, for each space is framed by pine trees, by the foliage that appears to have been there for centuries. There is no sense of mass building, but of balance and the celebration of nature. Even the suites were erected on existing ruins, so successfully that they all offer views of the sea while being surrounded by pine trees.
The hotel’s public areas arose over a vast crater, a blot on the landscape. We were so intent on this opportunity that only three of the five floors rise above the horizon, the other two are invisible to passers-by. When we speak of integration we speak of sustainability. The hotel opened in a pine forest that was already there, which we had saved from destruction. Natural drainage, tree species and ground cover were all safeguarded. We balanced spontaneous landscape, strewn with pine needles, with a more elaborate, specifically planned environment. We used schist, different types of wood, plastered walls, to produce the genuinely timeless elegance of this environment.
Techniques and details.
Our respect for the environment did not get in the way of the technical choices and strategies that illuminate such a vast and complex project. The dialectic between hotel and apartments, for instance, or the declination of hotel uses – which are either for leisure or recreation in the summer, or as a year-round meeting place or venue for seminars and conferences. Some of these functions coincide at certain times of year and that encouraged us to create spaces to articulate the interior and exterior communicating routes. The public areas are grouped together in a plaza surrounded by arcades, so typical of the cities strung along the Mediterranean. They accommodate cafés and restaurants, areas where people can gather and exchange experiences.
Water is a constant presence in the three outdoor pools for use by adults and the children’s pool, and also in the lake, the waterfall, the reflecting pool, revealing an intentional trajectory that lends lightness and freshness to the site. Above all, the vastness. All these features contribute to disguise the vastness of EPIC SANA Algarve. It is a hotel with 229 units, which include 160 deluxe bedrooms, many suites with views to the sea or to the garden, and 43 apartments with all the amenities needed for an unforgettable stay. There is a conference centre, with 5.000 square metres and natural light. 3 bars, 3 restaurants and a large, well-equipped spa. Without foregoing the amenities that define a five star hotel, the EPIC SANA Algarve has gone the extra mile in its architectural expression by celebrating the principles of communion between man and nature, where the space and the landscape illuminate the values of a world we must preserve and nurture.
