the metropole hotel in mariánské lázně (marienbad)

A thorough retrofitting of the old building to which adjoins the new addition is designed to meet the specific needs of accommodated guests fully. It is not a standard hotel but rather a medical, curative facility whose goal is not to accommodate guests but to provide renowned balneotherapeutic care associated with the place for several centuries. The linage of our design to the existing development concept is one of the new design's crucial starting points. New blocks' scale and composition support the already implemented concept of detached bathhouses, lone buildings formed by street lines. At the same time, we consider the integration into the town's overall urbanistic structure and harmony with the building's surroundings as an essential base point of our design. That is why by implementing it, we support the exploitation of the location's natural parameters by this approach – the orientation to the views to the town, the use of the existing road network emphasizing the natural differentiation of pavements from roads, the use of the site's natural terrain morphology and, last but not least, the rehabilitation and integration of the old bathhouse. The elementary outline of the designed buildings' architecture is mainly based on traditional conditions typical for the given location. We believe that the original Metropol bathhouse, whose façade will be carefully restored with its original details, should remain the entire bath complex's main feature – a sort of the location's logo. That is why the scale, heigh and architecture of the new blocks entirely subordinate to the existing building. The adjacent terrain's morphology and the plot's shape initiated the design of organic forms of the mixed-use pedestal that is suppressed into the secondary plan in contact with the old house to disturb its silhouette as little as possible. The new block with guestrooms levitates above a partly transparent façade of the mixed-use pedestal. Its elementary, simple, and entirely utilitarian organic form is rhythmed by circular windows. Round shapes and the fact that viewers perceive only four storeys visually decrease the scale of an otherwise spacious segment. The façade, having no disturbing details and seemingly dimensionless, is visually arranged to play a background role for the original bathhouse.