Holiday Inn hotel complex in Chelyabinsk

Date: 2006
Client: Group of Companies AZIA
Object: Project of the new hotel structure in Chelyabinsk – Russia
Location: Chelyabinsk – Russia
Size data:
Intervention area: 2.900 sq. m.;
Flooring surface: 8.200 sq. m.;
Volume: 25.000 c. m.;
Rooms: No.150 ;
Project Stage: Preliminary, Definitive Project, Interior Design
Partners: Arch. G. Ceppi – Arch. A. Piancastelli

The new four-star hotel structure of the Group Holiday Inn is located at a small distance from the centre of Chelyabinsk in a residential area of 2900 m² bordering the district road network and urban gardens. The banks of the River Mnacc act as a background to the context and typify it deeply: the water course, the ponds, the woodland and the wide turf are strong elements of the landscape, in which the new building has to relate itself.

If on the one side the image of the building structure recalls a high-tech monolith, on the other side it is permeated by the presence of the landscape: on the entrance floor the ground “bends” itself in a depression overlooked by the common spaces of the meeting area, offering the basement level a new bright sight and the view over green spaces as well. The vegetation plays the lead also on the roofing, where the roof garden is an integral part of the wellness centre. The transparent and translucent “skin” of the building reflects the green context and is protected by a metallic wrapping that gathers all the less public functions like a casket, isolating them acoustically from traffic and giving them a domestic-privacy atmosphere. While the metallic “skin” dialogues with the context through a chromatic dynamism, the different grey and green scales of the front modules make it iridescent in the different hours of the day and from the different points of view.