Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa
Champillon, France
Limestone dresses this luxurious hotel located in the heart of the vineyards
Listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, the Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa overlooks the Champagne hillsides. After four years of work, the iconic Relais & Châteaux has revealed its new face.
To dress the building, the architects used only two materials: light stone for opacity and glass for transparency.
To dress this minimalist hotel in perfect harmony with the landscape, the architect of the Royal Champagne called on Euville stone and of ROCHERONS marketed by Polycor. Built like a contemporary Roman ampitheater, the building is the work of the Rémois architect Giovanni PACE. He imagined a minimalist project in perfect harmony with the surrounding landscape. Sybille de Margerie, interior designer, was inspired by the natural and cultural heritage of the Champagne region: rooms are dressed in wood and stones from Euville and Rocherons as a contrast between a wild and graphic nature.
On the occasion of the 5th edition of the architectural competition "Building in natural stone in the 21st century" organized by SNROC & Pierre Actual, the Building Prize was awarded yesterday to the Hotel and Spa Royal Champagne, at the Rocalia fair, in the presence of Giovanni Pace, architect, and Jean-Louis Marpillat, Chairman of the ROCAMAT Board of Directors.
“The stone is a reference to the minerality of the limestone soil of our region.
It is a material that can have different finishes, softened, sandblasted, bush hammered, that we have "cleverly" mixed to bring to facades inert by nature a feeling of vibration as the day and night go on depending on the the orientation of the light.
The stone used is the stone of Euville, it is a hard stone, clear and homogeneous. Its shade is champagne. We chose this stone because the quarry is located in the Meuse and it is the closest to our site.
The facades are sometimes "open" to let light through and open up an "intimate" space with views. The layout of the stones is always the same, either we remove every other stone and we have a "skeleton" facade, or we remove a set of stones and we have a large bay. It is the basis of the architect's job to imagine, order, measure, determine functional and customary links ... to form a coherent, obvious whole, where you simply feel good, a place that we love and that we find beautiful. "
Gallery
Photo credits
@Fred Laures - PACE Architects
