Design Distinction

Hotel Aire de Bardenas

Wedged between wheat fields and a nature preserve in northwest Spain’s arid Bardenas region, the Hotel Aire de Bardenas is subject much of the year to a cold, northwest wind. So Barcelona architects Emiliano López and Mónica Rivera hunkered down the hotel buildings. Most of the 22 rooms are freestanding boxy pavilions with square window bays deep enough to double as sleeping alcoves. Wood-slatted produce containers, recycled from local farms and stacked around the 2.5-acre property, function as movable windbreakers and privacy screens, and groves of poplars and fruit trees further shield the structures. The terrain’s boulders and pebbles were adapted for rock gardens and exterior and interior terrazzo. “I don’t just want to stay there, and right away, I want to live there—it’s very seductive,” Kroloff rhapsodized. Lignano, however, said the austere interiors, with blond woodwork and steel bathroom fixtures, left him a little cold. “The interiors do drop out,” Kroloff conceded. “But the siting, general massing, and external spaces really are first rate.”

Design López Rivera Arquitectes (Barcelona): Emiliano López, Mónica Rivera, principals; Gillermo Zuaznabar, collaborator; María E. Seligra, Karen Pinheiro, Carla Isern, Gerard Bartomeu, Alba García, designers
Client Aire de Bardenas
Software ACAD, Adobe Photoshop