Hotel and Urban Park

Situated on the south bank of Lake Neuchâtel, the plot is located in Estavayer-le-Lac, Canton of Fribourg, Switzerland. The long and narrow plot forms a peninsula, on the tip of which the municipality assigned for a 5-storey programme of hotel and serviced apartments. Eastwards, the rest of the plot was planned as an urban park, in addition to a large surface car parking.

The project has been developed within the ongoing partnership PROMONTORIO STEIGER
(Marion Steiger ETH/SIA).

The proposed design strategy devised two parallel volumes corresponding to the 4-star hotel and to the serviced apartments respectively, joint by a common plinth that incorporates shared services and facilities such as reception, meeting rooms, loading docks, kitchens, laundry, back of house, etc. By positioning the  volumes perpendicularly to the lake bank, views are maximized, whilst blocking the least as possible the lakefront views from the park. Moreover, raising the terrain in order to meet the first floor datum enabled to create a suave promenade that leads people from the surface parking into the hotel amenities, and further West, into an informal of amphitheatre around the dock and the pier.

The façade system, in order to absorb the many constrains and requirements of the programme, is proposed as a diaphanous veil of sliding wood grill shutters, wherein the typical balcony effectively functions as a receding winter garden loggia, sheltered from the wind and the rain.