If Hobbits built a luxury hotel, it would probably look something like the new design concept from Stefano Boeri Architetti’s (SBA) hill-inspired Mountain Forest Hotel, a 250-room vertical forest that appears to grow right out of the surrounding landscape.
According to SBA’s website, this is actually SBA’s third vertical forest design, the first prototype appearing in Milan, which was then followed up with The Tower of the Cedars in Lausanne, Switzerland. While the Mountain Forest Hotel uses many of the same design principles as those previous efforts, the hotel has been specifically designed from and inspired by Guizhou, China’s topography, an area known as the 10 thousand peaks valley. The specific design of the hotel looks to reconstruct a former hill that was flattened out years ago.
SBA does not view these vertical forests as a gimmick or a novelty, but, instead, a necessity. “The symbiosis between man, architecture and nature is the real sustainability,” SBA writes about the project on its website. “Following the first prototype in Milan, then in Lausanne, the Vertical Forest is continuously consolidated as a model for a sustainable urbanization.”
Symbiosis and sustainability may be the key, but this is still designed as a luxury hotel, meaning it includes such features as a gym, lounge, VIP area, bar, restaurant, and conference room.
Rendering courtesy of Stefano Boeri Architetti
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