Hotel Pino

Project Description

Sarajevo is a longitudinal city, with a heterogeneous architecture, surrounded by mountains which hosted the Winter Olympics in 1984. Next to the cult of the coffee house, omnipresent in public space there is a tradition of recreation on the surrounding mountains – the lungs of the city. Hotel Pino is situated on the slopes of the Trebević mountain on 1070 m above sea level, ten minutes driving away from city center, built on ruins of the favorite pre-war resort – Prvi Šumar.

Regarding the building’s composition – hotel Pino consists of two bodies – the horizontal cube containing public functions and the vertical volume – tower which contains guest rooms and apartments. Responsible building on the mountain requests adaptation to climate and spatial conditions. Lessons from local vernacular architectural language were a crucial inspiration in forming the exterior face of the building. The steep spikes on the facade are an interpretation of geometry of mountain village houses and silhouettes of pine trees.
The main volume rests on a base cladded in stone – quoting again the traditional three-part division of buildings composition – legs/body/head – stone/wood/glass. Wooden shingles on the facade have proven in previous projects to be a sustainable, durable and economical material on the mountain. Yet, scratched below the surface, the load bearing structure is made of reinforced concrete and this dualism of materials is further interpreted in the interior design – warm wooden surfaces contrast rustic exposed concrete surfaces. The previously described tactility of materials is complemented with use of printed wall-papers – the image is returning into architecture as a scenography-decorative moment. How to design warmth and intimacy in a big structure? Our recipe lies in the subdivision of bigger interiors into smaller human-scale units. The intimacy begins in your own corner – to each his corner.