Scheiblhofer Resort Andau/Burgenland

Defined by materials as precious as they are natural and by a design in keeping with the building’s rural setting, vineyard owner Erich Scheiblhofer’s new hotel at Andau delivers a venue in which guests get to feel good and live out their senses. The new building is located in the Austrian Burgenland region near Lake Neusiedl and nestles in countryside very much given over to the cultivation of grapes. Indeed, the client’s own vines grow all around. The hotel presents itself as an understated, angular structure made up of a series of flat-roofed units.

An oblong single-storey ground-floor building is surmounted by two entities likewise oblong in shape that are elegantly elevated so as to rise up above the main unit. A pool of linear design hugs the building and affords luxurious views out from the interior spaces. Style-moulding cantilever floors act as access galleries and as a source of passive shading in equal measure. The staging of light plays a major role inside and is the medium to which the architecture primarily owes its atmosphere.

Spatial edges accentuated by the lighting lend the bathrooms a slightly cubist feel. Sculptural luminaires organise the various functions in the open communal area, whilst numerous large-format skylights create spots of focus and bathe the lobby, pool and restaurant in naturally incident light.

Whereas Arkan Zeytinoglu came to specialise in planning hotel buildings, his client Erich Scheiblhofer doubled up in the past as a producer of top-notch wines in a family-run business and as someone who actually helped fashion Andau, his place of birth and where he has spent his life, in rather special ways. These include, for instance, his building a new village hall and renovating the village inn. The idea and structure underpinning the hotel seem only logical given such commitment to the rural world.

Accommodating guests is a symbol of society as a whole for the architect, of its traditions and cultural history – and this is a point he seeks to convey in his hotel buildings. By analogy with the regional typology of a village built round a green, the make-up of the Scheiblhofer resort unfolds around an exceedingly high, elongated lobby. This engenders a central “village square” for guests as a meeting point and relaxing place to sojourn complete with reception, wine bar and shop. The square also interlinks the various functions and services provided by the hotel.

All rooms throughout the hotel are set apart by furniture and design features of the highest order. Architects simply love fashioning even the fine detail for their projects and Arkan Zeytinoglu is no exception, having come up with a chair of his own here. The handle the architect opted for was the FSB 1242/1243 model with a black coating, “in order to underscore the rural nature of my project,” as he explains. The lever handle was intended to look industrial and functional in both shape and colour and to unobtrusively tie in with the rest of the interior design. Which is what it does.