regula harder und jürg spreyermann, Zürich / Schweiz

Project: Hotel rebuilding of the lower guest house of the charterhouse Ittingen (Switzerland)
2. Prize of Category "Hotel"

Monastical room for guests
The lower guest house is a rebuilding of an economy building in the former Carthusian cloister in Ittingen in the Switzerland. The scenic situation and the constructional conciseness of the historical building can create an atmospheric uniqueness in which today's utilisation naturally is combined with the traces of the monastical history of this place. To construct within this grounds, is to search for an intensification of this specific identity of this place.

Materialisation
The rooms are simple, mural and cool. The floor consists of a beige-grey dyed hard concrete floor (Duratex, Walo Bertschinger, Kronbühl, Switzerland) and the walls and ceilings are out of gauged plaster (Röfix) and painted with organic silicate paint (Sax colours, Urdorf, Switzerland). Only the furniture characterise the rooms with their warm materials and their cubic conciseness without removing their meagreness. They are made of a rustic oiled elm wood with beige-grey creanit (Coristal, Rudolfstetten, Switzerland) for the heavily stressed niches areas of the wooden bodies in the guest rooms. The used textiles are cool, white cotton cloths (linen weaving mill Bern, Switzerland) for the bed and bath cloths and a beige-grey, coarse wool felt cloth (Kvadrat, Ebeltoft, Denmark) for the chair covers and plaids.

Hotel lounge
The central space of the building is the big hotel lounge. It is plastically spacious and mural and is related in its conciseness of the spacious effect, in its dimension and emptiness to the big cloister. As an open staircase which develops over the whole height of the cross gable and which is extended in the storeys to different recreation areas, it is a three-dimensional extending space sculpture which reveals the dimensions of the former economy building. It is entrance and recreation room and separates and connects the different functions of the building, is a temporary room for the important meantime of the guests. The artistic interventions of Harald F. Müller and Ernst Thoma turn the lounge into a colour and sound space. Single wall and ceiling areas are monochrome covered all over in venetian red, copper-blue and manganese grey by Harald F. Müller. These colours refer to paintings in the historical cloister building of the 18th century which decisively determined the imagination of the great ease of the Rococo. These rich colours are shining in the white lounge and dominate the space in form of reflections and coloured shadows. The installation of an acoustic clock of Ernst Thoma, picks out as a central theme the daily routine of the Carthusians. In the course of life of the monks, short pieces of music can be heard which are moving through the lounge. The different tones are atmospherical and the silence is so much insistent after trailing off the tone.

Materialisation
The rooms are simple, mural and cool. The floor consists of a beige-grey dyed hard concrete floor (Duratex, Walo Bertschinger, Kronbühl, Switzerland) and the walls and ceilings are out of gauged plaster (Röfix) and painted with organic silicate paint (Sax colours, Urdorf, Switzerland). Only the furniture characterise the rooms with their warm materials and their cubic conciseness without removing their meagreness. They are made of a rustic oiled elm wood with beige-grey creanit (Coristal, Rudolfstetten, Switzerland) for the heavily stressed niches areas of the wooden bodies in the guest rooms. The used textiles are cool, white cotton cloths (linen weaving mill Bern, Switzerland) for the bed and bath cloths and a beige-grey, coarse wool felt cloth (Kvadrat, Ebeltoft, Denmark) for the chair covers and plaids.

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