Lobby in Emily Resort

Bold architectural statements

The hotel lobby captures your attention instantly with a large-scale installation. The hung-up sycamore in the hotel atrium is the iconic image of the whole complex.

The powerful tree permeates five stories. Its organic silhouette creates a contrast with the rhythmical geometry of the walls, horizontal lines of the floors, verticals of boards on the wall covering, and diagonals of metal banisters on the stairs. Hotel guests can lie on a round leather pouf in the hall and get a unique emotional experience of contemplating the tree from under its roots.

“We rejected the idea of a massive chandelier in the atrium in favor of a strongly meaningful installation. A tree means connection with roots and family values, growth, and development, strong bar, and flexible branches. It connects the earth and space,” said Volodymyr Nepiyvoda of YOD Group. 

Materiality of the space

The architects chose natural pale colors, honest materials, and touchable surfaces. The walls are clad with Thermory Drift thermo-spruce in Black Pearl and Smoked Brandy tones.

Drift series is characterized by wall panels with a gently worn appearance that gives the look of reclaimed wood without compromising on durability.

“We aimed to get the visual lightness and tell the story about the morning breeze that passes on the lake surface and combs the reeds. We created this emotion by the structure of the boards that we used for the wall covering of the hall. Every board is fixed into a movable groove. You can change the pattern on the wall by moving the first board in the row."

Flow between inside and outside

Visiting Terra restaurant is like being on a tour around Western Ukraine. On the right side, you can see green mountain hills. Sprinkles of distant shepherd’s fires light there at night. On the left side, you behold a peaceful lake. Its water surface is covered with ripples when it is windy, and you hear rustling reeds on its banks.

„We reflect all of that in the interior of Terra restaurant. Vast expanses, rich colors, textures and flavors, generous nature, lust for life, and existential joy. It represents the local Ukrainian vision of the four elements concept. “

The roomy terrace with American sweetgum trees extends the restaurant space. The architects aimed to make a smooth flow between the inside and outside spaces to make guests embrace harmony and inner peace.

The main star of the lobby is an impressive tree with branches and roots suspended as if in space, symbolizing the generations of the family. The idea behind the lighting was to create a suspended weightless tree sculpture as a bright accent and to cover the entire floor and walls with complex organic shadow patterns and additional tree reflections in partially glass vertical surfaces. We solved many not simple problems with light, but this problem is a super ball that we had to work hard on! It is challenging but exciting and pleasant to puzzle over such tasks!

For the wood to be an accent, we needed to avoid illuminating the walls and floor and generally avoid additional bright glare so that nothing would compete with the reflection of the wood in the glass. And it was tough to do since we wanted to make large shadows repeating the tree's shape along with the roots on the two side walls, and, accordingly, we had to cover large surfaces with flood lights. They had to be cut with scissors precisely along the broken lines of the tree contour with the help of complex custom curtains and lenses. In addition, we wanted to stretch and multiply the shadows from the roots to the entire surface of the floor of the forehead, but in such a way that no light sources could be seen from any angle.

For this purpose, we had to specially design and manufacture individual lamps of several types, which are hidden in inconspicuous, non-random places on the walls, ceiling and even hidden in the long roots of trees, lenses, and secondary light-forming accessories to draw contrasting shadows on the walls and the floor with light, complementing the natural lobby atmosphere. In addition, we made the tree reflected in the dark glass, so this stunning sculpture seems to multiply itself into several copies thanks to the play of light, shadows, and reflections.

At the same time, very subtle lighting settings were required to not overlight other areas of the lobby interior, to distribute the accents on the wood correctly, and to create a comfortable light for guests that will not dazzle. A million experiments, tests on the spot. Refinement of optical systems and light-blocking accessories and the light part was solved!

But 50 or even more percent of the effect is creative work on the spot for setting up and carefully programming dozens of light groups in the scenography. Creation of scenarios. For each time of day, be it morning or late night, separate lighting scenarios have been developed, which we adjust and adjust through our software and the Expolight Cloud Control System. Our work is a balance of creativity and engineering in equal degrees